Of Violets and Emeralds
by RustyViko4ever
Summary: Post-PP, Sam is dabbling in gothic magic, to learn how to stop a ghost once and for all. Danny's not so sure about this; but other forces at play are not giving them a choice. Chp9 - Forces are rallied for the coming showdown, inside and out. Sam/Danny
1. Opening Gambit

"Of Violets and Emeralds"

Chapter 1

The Goth Girl and the Ghost Kid….I have to admit, the first time the idea occurred to me, even _I_ thought it was pretty ridiculous. Never mind the fact that Danny was my best friend, but come on…a goth and a ghost? Sounds like something out of a dumb movie. Like some inane vampire fantasy getting dumbed down to a TV-Y7 Fantasy Violence cartoon. Never mind that no one would have believed it – at least not until Danny Phantom became a world-saving hero, anyway – but it was just too cheesy to think about.

The first time I thought about it, anyway.

But, the idea did grow on me. Hard not to when said Goth Girl and Ghost Kid were constantly fighting evil together, and the only other members of the team had the air of "side kick" about them like it had been stamped on their foreheads with a pair of ink-stained corporate brass knuckles. Don't get me wrong, Tucker's a great guy – for a carnivore – but he was always a bit too much of a goof to really be hero material. Jasmine had a similar problem. As for me, well I may not have been the one to "save the day" quite like Danny would, and I wouldn't say that we never needed them, but I always felt more like Danny's partner than his sidekick.

In more ways than one, I guess.

After we saved the world from the Disasteroid (which by the way is a really stupid name, but whatever), and the whole world knew that Danny Phantom was actually Danny Fenton, things did start to change pretty fast. He and I started going out; but requests from all over the world started coming in.

"Save us from the ghosts, Danny Phantom!"

"Contribute to our research, Danny Phantom!"

"Help us catch our criminals, Danny Phantom!"

"Aid in our international negotiations, Danny Phantom!"

"ENDORSE OUR BRAND, DANNY PHANTOM!"

To his credit, Danny managed to stay out of most of it. Maybe between me, his parents and Jaz he didn't have much choice, but really, he was pretty smart. He knew that Amity Park was always in enough trouble that the world would have to manage on its own somehow. He took the occasional offer – I know that "Danny Phantom Lightning Briefs" were really popular for a while – but mostly, he stayed at home, going to school by day and helping his parents with R&D during the evenings.

Tucker was usually busy being "The Youngest Mayor in Amityville Park History." Meanwhile, Danny and I…well, we had the nights. Ah, the nights.

Ghost hunting, mostly. But not entirely. We were young…we were in love. When we had time, we had our ghostly romance. Gothicism and ectoplasm. You've got to admit, there's something attractive about a boy who literally glows, even to a creature of the night like myself. He's…unique. Much more unique than the other guys who ever tried to hit on me, and there were several. Especially once word got out that Danny and I were an item, and my residual popularity skyrocketed.

It was a nightmare. Girls like Paulina – _Paulina! _– were trying to curry favor with me. Undoubtedly so they could stab me in the back later and try to take Danny away, but that wasn't going to happen. Besides, even with that massive shift in social life, some things were always going to be more important. The biggest of those was, and probably always would be, ghost hunting.

Danny may have saved the Earth and the Ghost Zone, but that only protected him from the majority of his human enemies. There were still legions of ghosts who had it out to get him, and they were getting stronger and deadlier by the day. I started to realize that it really wasn't going to be enough to keep capturing them and hurling them back into the Ghost Zone – given enough time, they would always find a way back into our world, and they would always come hunting Danny.

And with the entire world knowing his alternate identity, the ghosts could go after just about any human on the planet to use against him. If we were going to have any peace in our lives, some of these ghosts were going to need a more permanent solution than ecto-blasters and Fenton thermoses.

"So…what then?" Danny asked, sitting across from me in my basement. My parents weren't too fond of me dating a ghost boy, but since he had saved the world, they were willing to overlook it. "We can't…you know, _kill_ them. They're ghosts. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way."

"Maybe not," I said, standing in front of my newly-installed "all things goth, ecto and mystical" bookshelf. "But some of them _are_ trying to kill you. Skulker still wants to hang your pelt over his fireplace! And you're only half ghost. So I'm pretty sure it _does_ work that way for you."

"I know that, Sam. That's why we're talking about this. But what else can we do?"

I could feel his eyes on me, all concern. He was a good kid…a little sloppy sometimes, a little selfish, but by and by his only real concern was doing the right thing. He didn't want to kill anyone or anything. But me…well, I was getting older, and let's just say I wasn't getting any less gothic. If there was a way to kill a ghost, and that's what I had to do to protect Danny and the people I cared about, I was prepared to do it.

"We fight for keeps," I said, throwing him a look over my shoulder, a grim smile on my face. He looked less than pleased about it. "I'm serious, Danny. What if there IS a way to stop them, once and for all? Maybe we can't kill them, but what if we can take away their power? All of it. For good."

"How is that different, exactly?" he asked, arms crossed, eyebrow raised in that typical quizzical fashion of his. Cute, strong, brave, kind-hearted…but not the brightest boy around. I sighed quietly and pulled a book from the shelf, and flipped open to a bookmarked page with an article called "Ghostly Basics."

"Look here," I said, showing him the article. "It says that ghosts are basically leftover human consciousness that takes form by commandeering the ectoplasm around it. The reason you can't 'kill' a ghost is because ectoplasmic weapons are only attacking the ectoplasm…given enough time, the consciousness will always reform itself, once it gets back to the Ghost Zone. See what I'm getting at?"

He frowned in concentration, but eventually he seemed to get it. "So you're saying that a ghost's power comes from its consciousness. To stop the ghost, we have to get at that consciousness. But…then what?"

There was a hint of fear behind those soft blue eyes. He could already guess what I was going to say, but I don't think he wanted to hear me say it. It hurt to have to tell him the truth, but he needed to hear it. I closed the book, closed my eyes…couldn't look him in the face for this.

"We have to destroy it, Danny. Before it destroys us."

"Woh," he said, standing and moving towards me. "Sam, I thought we agreed that we weren't going to kill anyone here! We're supposed to be the good guys, remember? Protect the innocent?"

"We _are_ the innocent!" I stared at him hard, met his own fierce gaze. Gods, he was such a hard head sometimes…I grated my teeth for a bit, looking for my next works. "They're coming for us, and you know it. How long before Desiree hears a wish for you to be defeated once and for all? How long before Technus develops a virus that causes every car on the highway to crash all at once, including ours? How long before Vortex gets a lucky shot on you…or someone you love…"

I looked away again, fearing that I wasn't going to get through to him on this. I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, saw his eyes soft and kind again.

"Don't worry, Sam. I'll protect us all. I _promise_. With the research my parents are doing, every police force and government in the world is learning how to defend against ghost attack. I don't want to sink to their level, and I know you don't want to either. Trust me."

I wanted to trust him. I really, truly did. I wanted to believe that we lived in a world where we wouldn't have to destroy a person's consciousness for a second time, just to protect our own…and two years ago, when this whole situation started, I might have. But these days I just knew better. Attacks had been getting more frequent, and more powerful. We had stronger weapons, but so did they. The stakes kept growing higher. I trusted Danny, but I didn't trust the police, or the government. I didn't want anyone to die because we didn't have the gumption to finally strip ghosts like Skulker of their power, by any means necessary.

"I do trust you, Danny." I took his hand in mine, held it near my heart. I could feel the swirl of ectoplasm just beneath the skin. It was cold, infused with Danny's cryomancy. It was soothing. But… "I trust you to stop the ghosts whenever they show up. But I don't want them to keep showing up, time and time again. I want them to leave us alone. And there's only two ways to do that: seal off the Ghost Zone forever…or take out the ghosts. Forever."

His eyes narrowed in concentration, and he placed his free hand over mine. I looked into his eyes, hoping he would listen to me, believe what I had to say, trying to will it into him. But he finally closed his eyes in frustration, looking away.

"No, Sam. I can't do it. I won't help you kill any of these ghosts."

I threw his hands away.

"Damn it, Danny! You said it yourself, we can't 'kill' them; they're already dead anyway! So what's the problem if we send them to the next plane of existence? If they were regular humans, ghosts like Skulker would be in prison for the things they've done, if not on their way to the executioner! Hunting for human pelts? That's seriously unacceptable! And the only prison in the Ghost Zone is run by Walker. We all know how competent _he_ is. For all the times you've sent Technus and Desiree and Ember and Young Blood back to the Ghost Zone, he's never held on to any of them more than once. Once! How can you just be okay with fighting the same ghosts over and over again when they want nothing less than to rule the world, take your life, or both?"

"Because it's not our right to make that decision!" he shouted, pounding his fist on the armrest of the sofa. "You may have a point that it would make everyone's life easier if ghosts like Ember just went away forever. You may be right that they barely count as people because they are just scraps of consciousness wrapped in ectoplasm. But they seem like people to me, and even if they are bad people, they're still people. We don't have the right to end their existence, whether their existence is like ours or not. I won't do it, alright?"

He looked at me hard, his eyes glowing green; he clearly meant business about this point, and I wasn't going to persuade him. I sighed again, picked up the book and put it back in the shelf. "Alright. But there has to be something we can do to make us safer. Spectre Deflectors and Ghost Shields will only keep working for so long before more ghosts learn how to break them, like you did with your Ghostly Wail. And I want to figure out what that something is."

"What kind of something are you talking about?"

I looked back at him, saw his eyes go back to normal. He even sat back down on the couch; I guess he was relieved to have me not talking about "killing" any more. Truth be told, it made me feel better too. I didn't like the idea of killing any more than he did, I was just more willing to consider it. He was cut out for saving people, not killing anything. And being an ultra recyclovegetarian myself, I wasn't really cut out for killing either. I supposed I could be satisfied with a new sort of defense, at least for the time being.

I sat next to him on the couch. "I'm talking about a magical something. Sort of like Freakshow – with the Reality Gauntlet? Only less world-ending and more friend-protecting."

Danny's eyebrows raised. "You know magic?" he asked, his voice still squeaking just-so.

"Well, I'm learning…I still don't know very much. But you might be surprised how fast you can pick this stuff up when you've been exposed to as much ghostly energy as I have. Here, let me show you."

I traced a sigil in the air with my finger, then closed my eyes and concentrated on the energy flowing through the air around us. Danny's ecto-pulse acted like a conductor, making the energies easier to detect; along with my experience as his partner, I was able to pick up on the flow, and extend a portion of my own consciousness through the sigil I'd traced and into the current. I shaped it into a dome around us. I opened my eyes and looked over at Danny, who was looking about, confused.

"Did something happen?" he asked.

"Try walking to the other side of the room," I said.

He stood, and managed about two steps before a purple storm of energy flared up in the dome shape I'd created, sending a mildly painful bolt of force through him and pushing him right back to sitting next to me on the couch.

"Surprised?" I asked, folding my arms smugly across my chest.

He ran a hand through his jolted-out hair, and looked at me dryly. "Shocked."

"Come on…you have to admit that was pretty impressive."

"Actually it was," he said, looking around. "I still can't see anything. What did you do, anyway?"

"The same thing that ghosts do, really. I extended my consciousness into the ecto-currents and molded it to my will. It's harder for humans to do because we have physical bodies that slow us down, and there isn't as much ectoplasm on Earth as there is in the Ghost Zone, but it is possible. And the only thing that limits us, besides the difficulty, is our imagination. With enough practice, I could do just about anything with this stuff!"

I was really excited at this point, and hoping to see the same from Danny, but all I saw was concern.

"Anything? Like…kill a ghost?"

His look felt like an ecto-blast from the eyes. Chagrined, I looked down at the floor.

"Not necessarily…more like, protect people with an energy field that ghosts can't see…or create a projection that can fight a ghost without us having to get anywhere near it."

"Or kill a ghost."

I paused, but had to say it. "Eventually. Maybe."

Danny gave a heavy sigh. "Sam, if you want to research magic so you can have another weapon against the ghosts, that's fine. Really, it is…I want us to have as many ways to defend ourselves as possible. But you shouldn't be letting this stuff go to your head and making you think it's okay to end existences! That's just too much."

"You're probably right. I'm just scared…I don't want to lose you. I want to protect you. By any means necessary."

We stared into each other's eyes again, looking for answers. Gradually his gaze began to soften, as did mine. "You know," he said, "I think this is normally where _you_ would say something like, 'He who fights monsters should take care not to become a monster himself.'"

"Yes, 'for when you stare long into the abyss, the abyss stares long into you.' From Nietzsche. You're getting better read, Danny Fenton." I smiled.

"What can I say? You're rubbing off on me, Sam Manson." He smiled too.

"Okay, okay…no lethal research. But I _am_ going to keep learning magic."

"That's fine by me. I'm sure it'll come in handy sooner or later. But in the meantime…do you mind letting down that invisible purple shock field so we can go on ghost patrol?"

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the arcing energy around us, and the ecto-echo of the sigil I'd traced, and with a quick gesture, disbanded it. A gentle sigh echoed through the room, whisper-like, in much the same way as a ghost becoming intangible. I opened my eyes to see Danny staring at me, as if trying to see with his eyes what I was doing mostly with my mind. He was concentrating so hard, it was actually kind of endearing.

As I started concentrating back, hoping to see what was going on in _his_ mind, an alarm on Danny's wrist started to buzz, and a voice crackled in through static.

"_**DANNY!**_ _It's your __father__. There's __**GHOSTS**__ swarming the compound! We need _backup_!"_

"Right on cue," Danny and I both said. He transformed – he no longer shouted "I'm going ghost," even though I kind of missed it sometimes – then grabbed my wrist, turned us intangible, and flew us off to Fentonworks.

No matter how many times we'd done this routine, intangibility sent a chill down my spine, which was something I normally enjoyed. But this time...this time, I couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen.

Thanks for reading. I promise the next chapter will be longer, especially if you leave reviews. Also, the story idea is still flexible, so if you make suggestions, you may find them reflected in later updates. Cheers!

-R


	2. Constraints

Chapter 2

Being turned intangible is a funny feeling. It's sort of like being electrocuted but without the pain, while also being doused in ice water but without the shortness of breath – very difficult sensations to describe to someone who's never felt them before. But I was used to it by now, and because of the strong association it had with Danny, I actually had grown to like it sometimes.

Something about this time was different. Maybe Danny was shaken up from the shock-field I'd made and so his grasp on his powers was a little fuzzy, or maybe I was just choked up from our conversation…or maybe I really was having some kind of premonition of doom. But there were enough clichés in my life already, I couldn't make room for that possibility. Instead, I started going over tactics and intel.

The data on our FentonBands, the portable battle computers attached to our wrists, said that our enemy was none other than the Box Ghost. I tried to breathe a sigh of relief, but couldn't; premonitions aside, even the Box Ghost was tougher than he used to be. Rumor had it that he and the Lunch Lady were an item now and it seemed to have "beefed" up his repertoire. The last time he came after Danny, he had learned how to fire ecto blasts. That wasn't a problem by itself, but it did make me a bit nervous about what might come next.

Danny and I were a few blocks away from Fentonworks when we could see the low-level Ectopusses and other junk ghosts looping in the air around the compound, Fenton-tech blasting in every direction. Valerie was nowhere to be seen, which was unsurprising; I don't think her pride could handle working next to Danny anymore than she absolutely had to, and without Plasmius to furnish her with gear, she had needed to go find another sponsor. After all their bad blood, it was no surprise she didn't want to team up with Danny's parents; basically, she was long gone.

"This doesn't look so bad," Danny said, tracking the motions of the ghosts. Between our combined years of experience, I had to agree; everything looked pretty standard. "Did he really need to call me for this..?"

An explosion blew out the second floor windows of Fentonworks, and out of it soared that classic foe in blue; red eyes, stained workclothes, and a characteristic look of vengeance and stupidity plastered on his ghostly face.

"**BEWAAAARE!**"

He flew higher into the sky, and the other ghosts fled. I cast a glance at Danny.

"That seem odd to you?"

"He's got something in his hands," Danny said, translucent gaze still intense as ever while focused on the job. "What…oh no."

"What is it?" I asked, following his stare before shouting in shock. I had just enough to catch my breath before Danny threw me to the top of a nearby building, where my intangibility left in time for me to catch a hard landing on my rear. Then, a flash of light, a pulsing wave of blue and white energy, and Danny was caught up in our most basic weapon, and gone in a blink.

"BEHOLD! I am the _BOX GHOST_, master of all things which contain for storage, transport, and eventual release to a new recipient and owner! At long last, I have acquired the ultimate container, that item which stores even the mightiest of ghosts – the FENTON THERMOS! **Beware!**"

For a split second, I almost _did_ beware – but after so many times of Danny accidentally getting caught in his own trap, we had installed a remote fail-safe. I gave the Box Ghost a classic battle smirk before pressing the automatic "release" button on my FentonBand; all that remained was for Danny to emerge, deliver a snappy one-liner, and deck the Box Ghost right back into the Ghost Zone.

But Danny didn't appear.

_Now_ I was bewaring.

"Pitiful human!" the Box Ghost wailed, swooping down in front of me. "It is as I told you – I am the Box Ghost, _master _of all containers! As long as I hold the Fenton Thermos with my power, your shiny buttons will have no effect!"

For effect, he gave his best attempt at a villainous laugh, giving an eyes-closed cackle and holding the thermos over his head. I tried to stay calm, and with a slow breath, traced a sigil in the air. Danny's ecto-pulse was going off like fireworks inside the thermos, and even the Box Ghost added a strong locus of force in the currents around us; extending my will through the sigil, it was a simple matter to accelerate some of that ectoplasm in just the right way.

"Foolish child, are you not afraid? I have conquered your mightiest hero..!"

I just smirked, and gave a mental _push_. A purple fist of crackling energy coalesced in the air and slammed into the Box Ghost's exposed belly and sent him flying down to the ground, where I could see Jazz and Danny's mom already getting ready to intercept him; in his place, the Fenton Thermos remained, landing harmlessly on the roof next to me. I pushed the "release" button again, and Danny emerged this time, his fist already poised for a classic right hook.

"Try to contain THIS!" he shouted, before realizing with a blank look that there was no one but me.

"I think I can handle it," I said, crossing my arms and smirking. "You okay?"

He touched down and turned back to being human, scratching behind his head.

"Yeah, but…what happened? Where'd he go?"

"I beat him with magic," I said plainly, my smirk growing even bigger.

Danny wasn't smiling, though. "Why didn't you let me out of the thermos first? I thought we made that auto-release button just in case something exactly like this happened?" He wasn't just concerned; he was angry.

"Danny…" I studied his expression, trying to figure out what the hell he was thinking this time. "I DID try. Didn't you hear him? It wouldn't work as long as he was holding on to the thermos. I had to get it away from him first."

His face softened a bit, but he still seemed…disappointed?

"Sam…just use the Spectre Deflector next time, okay? I don't want you trying out your magic when I'm not there to protect you," he said, taking steps towards me, moving to grab my hands protectively.

I pulled them away. "You mean so that you can babysit me?"

We stared at each other, trying to find the right words.

"You were talking about killing people. I don't completely trust this magic, okay? It's creepy," he said, finally breaking the gaze.

"Says the half-ghost kid," I said quietly. "I'm sorry this creeps you out, but you have to trust me. I'm not going to go on some killing spree, okay? I think you have the right to ask that much of me, and I respect you enough not to just do that behind your back. This is our fight and we have to do it together. Alright?"

I offered my hands again, and he took them, giving me that bashful smile of his, and I can imagine I turned pretty red too. A few years later and we were still just kids, after all.

"Alright," he said. "I'm sorry. Guess I was just embarrassed for getting caught by the freaking _BOX GHOST_ of all people."

"Beeewaaaare," I said, throwing my hands up in mockery of the Box Ghost's "spooky" pose. "It is strange though. Unusually clever for him."

"Nah," Danny said, waving a hand. "I bet he just wanted to try to impress the Lunch Lady or something."

"Now _there's_ an arch enemy. I've always said that meat will be the death of us," I said, dry as sandpaper. Danny still ate the occasional burger, but I had mostly succeeded in whittling him down to being a pescetarian. Somehow, in the middle of this war with the Beyond, these things still mattered, and I'd be damned if I would give an inch on my principles just because Danny was a hero. He bore it with good grace, which made me happy.

We both looked at each other, smiling, before the smell of smoke wafted under our noses and directed our attention back at Fentonworks. Oh, right; the second floor windows had been blown out.

"We have to get down there and make sure everyone's okay!" Danny said, going ghost and holding out his hand in invitation. I grabbed it like always, and we flew down to the street.

Jazz was struggling to keep her own copy of the Fenton Thermos out of Danny's mom's hands. "I'll rip that ghost apart molecule by molecule for trying to capture my poor boy!" she shrieked. "I'll make him paaaay!"

"Mother, this kind of aggression isn't healthy to display around an impressionable teenager! You have to show Danny that violence isn't the answer!" she said, sounding the same as always. "We caught the ghost, and everyone's alright, aren't they?"

With effort, Danny's mom restrained herself. "I suppose you're right…oh, Danny! Sam! Thank goodness you're here. Have you seen your father?"

"**MADDIE! HEEEEELLLP!"**

It came from the second floor, just before another explosion flamed out of a far window.

"More ghosts?" Jazz asked, still the most easily shaken of the group.

"No…" Danny's mother sighed. "That was your father having trouble with the Fenton Home Repair System. He's still working out the bugs. I better go help him out…JACK!" She started running back into the house. "You have to decouple the ectoflux converters before engaging the primary power coils, how many times do we have to go over this?"

Danny, Jazz and I were alone on the street, broken glass from the windows on the pavement around us, and an angry Box Ghost trapped in the thermos in Jazz's hands.

"Good to see you, Sam," she said. "You are alright, right, Danny?"

"I'm fine, Jazz," Danny said, working at not being irritated by his overbearing sister. He _was_ getting better. "So what happened, anyway? I mean, I know love can make a person stupid, but a frontal assault on Fentonworks is _really_ stupid, even for the Box Ghost."

"I don't think the Box Ghost is really responsible for this, Danny," Jazz said, heading back into the house. We followed her down into the lab. "I mean, he's gotten stronger, but not strong enough to command all of those ghosts that followed him. And if he really was in command, I don't know why they would have just abandoned him in the middle of battle. Nothing about this is characteristic of the Box Ghost at all. It seems more like the kind of plan that Walker or even Plasmius might have come up with. But we haven't detected any trace of them on Earth or in the Ghost Zone. And since when could the Box Ghost control technology? Do you think he's teamed up with Technus?"

She emptied the thermos into the Ghost Portal, and leaned against the sealed door, head bowed in concentration. She was obviously distressed by not knowing the answer. It didn't cause the nervous breakdowns it used to, but it was still a weakness of hers.

"I don't think so," Danny said. "Technus couldn't be that subtle to save his afterlife. He would have made some big announcement about his plans to conquer the world after capturing me."

"Well it wasn't Plasmius," I offered. "I'm pretty sure he's floating off somewhere in space. Probably forever. Alone and miserable."

Apparently I was a bit too satisfied with that fact, as I got some awkward looks from the other two. "Dark," Danny said, trying to laugh it off. "But I guess if anyone deserves it…"

"Let's try to stay focused, you two," Jazz said. "Who would have given the Box Ghost the idea? And who would have the power to make ghosts follow him as a distraction, only to have them run away the second he got the thermos? It's almost like him getting the thermos was just a distraction."

"Or a test," Danny said. "They never planned for the Box Ghost to actually succeed and get away with the thermos, they just wanted to see what would happen if he tried. They probably wanted to find out if he could really control container technology, and what _we_ can do about it."

"They really are stepping up their game, then," I said, mostly to myself, but the other two heard me. They were waiting for more. "It's like I was saying to Danny. The ghosts are getting stronger. I don't think it's a coincidence. How many defeats can they all keep suffering before one of them gets the idea to really get military about this? We're not in some Saturday morning cartoon, you guys. These are _ghosts_, and they want to _kill us_. I think one of them is finally taking this seriously."

Danny stared at me hard. He knew where I wanted to take this conversation. He didn't like it. _Tough_, I thought. Just because I couldn't talk about killing ghosts didn't mean I wouldn't face the reality that they were trying to kill us.

"But who?" Jazz said, trying to break the tension with a gentle voice. "If what Sam is saying is true then we need to up our game, too. Let's think: what ghost wields enough influence to order other ghosts around, and has enough brains to set up scenarios like this just to study his powers and his opponents?"

"It isn't Desiree," Danny said. "She's not even smart enough to censor what wishes she grants."

"Couldn't be Poindexter. He's got the brains but definitely not the clout," I said.

We went on like that for a while, testing out every possibility, but none of them made any sense. Eventually Jazz shouted in frustration and gave up. "I'm going to go help mom and dad clean up upstairs. If you two figure out anything else, report back immediately. In the meantime, just be careful, okay?"

"We will," Danny and I chimed.

Jazz left, and Danny and I sat together in the lab, thinking.

"Why isn't she in college yet?" Danny asked with a sigh.

"Easy, Danny. It's still summer. She'll be in college soon enough. And she's really not that bad."

"As a sidekick? No. But as a sister…ugh. She just gets on my nerves. I mean, I'm Danny Phantom! She doesn't need to worry about me every time I get sucked up in a thermos or hit by an ecto blast."

He was staring at the Ghost Portal, those black and yellow chevrons apparently holding some secret I couldn't see. "It's okay for her to be worried, Danny. I worry too. This time the Box Ghost could control the thermos while he was holding on to it…what's going to come next? I'm worried too."

All I could see was his face in profile, dark thought swirling in those blue eyes. "Whatever comes next," he said, "I can handle it. I promise. I'll have faith in your magic if you have faith in my power. Okay?"

He looked back at me with a pained hope on his face. He never wanted to hear me speak of these battles as life and death. It was too bleak for him. His hope was that if he was strong enough, I wouldn't need to worry; when people worried, he had to worry too. And he couldn't handle that. I have to admit that I kind of felt bad for him in that moment, where it seemed like all of the moral burden of killing a ghost – which for him was extremely significant – was falling square on his shoulders, on his ability to be strong enough that such action wasn't necessary.

But it was naïve. It was downright stupid. I couldn't have faith that his power would be strong enough forever; for now, maybe. But not forever.

I gave an angry sigh.

"I can't do that. I promise I won't try to kill any ghosts unless we agree on it, but I won't stop worrying about you until we figure out _something_ else. What's the next new ghost ability going to be? What if we aren't prepared for it? You aren't invincible, Danny Phantom! But as long as we keep throwing them back into the Ghost Zone, they _are_ invincible. Even your dad would know those aren't good odds. The only reason he and your mom haven't killed the ghosts yet is because they don't know how."

I tried to steady my voice, shaking by now, while Danny stayed silent. I hoped he was thinking about what I'd said and not just ignoring me, but the silence stretched on. I had to try to say something.

"Danny–"

"If someone is trying to make a battle plan against us by testing out the strengths and weaknesses of all the ghosts, then we'll just have to take them out. If we get rid of the one at the top, then we won't have to worry about any of the others."

He was staring at me with green eyes again; emerald light touching my violets. It was easy to get lost in those eyes, but I held fast. This was huge, after all.

"Are you saying you'd consider it if it only had to be one or two?" I asked.

"I'm not saying anything for sure!" he shouted. He took a deep breath and returned to normal, blue eyes downcast, sitting heavily on a lab stool. "But you _may _have a point. I got pretty scared today when I couldn't get out of the thermos. I don't want us to think about killing anyone, but I guess we should try to figure out…something. Do you have any ideas?"

I pulled up a stool and sat next to him. "There are two ghosts I know of who know the most about ghost history and ghost warfare. Frostbite…"

"…and Clockwork," Danny finished. "You think we should ask them?"

I nodded. "They could at least give us some leads."

He sighed. "Okay. I'll go talk to them tomorrow. You keep researching in your books and practicing your magic. Hopefully Jazz and my parents can figure out who's responsible for this, and somewhere in between all of that we can stop things from getting out of hand."

I hugged him, resting my head on his shoulder. "Thank you."

We stayed put for a while, happy to be near each other, but afraid of what would come next. So for the time being, all we wanted was to sit and breathe with one another. The simple joy of being alive and safe…

Of course, it was shattered in moments as that great sigh of relief issued a ghostly chill, a telltale ghost sense indicator that trouble was near.

"What is it?" I asked, jumping to my feet.

"I don't know." Danny went ghost without waiting to find out, and threw up a basic ecto-shield around us. "But we're about to find out!"

All on its own, the Ghost Portal opened, and a blast of green light shot out from inside. The light dimmed, but my eyes were still hazy from the brightness; but I didn't need to see to recognize the voice that greeted us.

"I finally have you, whelp!"

Thanks for reading! Please review as they are lovely. Hopefully there will be a little less talk, a little more action (please) as the story progresses and the investigations really get in motion. You can expect to see lots of old foes…and probably a few new ones! But I can't tip all my cards yet. ^^ Hope you enjoyed!

-R


	3. Piercing Truths

Chapter 3

Skulker, with flaming hair and a hard grin, stood on the lab floor, the swirling maw of the Ghost Zone glowing behind him. He let out a bass chuckle, and weapons sprouted from his armor.

"Any last words?" he asked, blasters whining as they warmed up.

"Here's a few," Danny said, moving in front of me. "Leave. Us. ALONE!"

He held the ecto-shield with one hand, and fired a blast with the other, but Skulker was quick; he dodge-rolled and fired a few shots from his wrist laser. Danny blocked them with his ecto-shield, and kept firing his own blasts. "Sam, turn on your Spectre Deflector!" he shouted, visibly trembling from the effort of keeping a shield up over both of us while trying to keep up with Skulker.

"Right," I said, throwing on my Deflector and activating it. He was able to let his own shield down and concentrate on fighting, while I was able to back away and concentrate on trying to draw up a sigil to push Skulker back into the Ghost Zone.

"How did you get out of there, Skulker?" Danny asked. "Since when can you just barge through the Portal?"

He shot a freezing blast at Skulker's jet packs, but Skulker pushed a button on his wrist and a red-hot grid of energy appeared around his body, melting the ice before it got anywhere near him. He gave a stupid grin.

"I can do whatever I like, whelp! But you can't do a thing."

Skulker fired missiles from his shoulders, most of which Danny blew apart. He caught the last one and threw it back at Skulker, who had to lower his heat shield to dodge it. Danny fired another freeze blast and caught Skulker, freezing him up to his neck. Skulker fell to the lab floor.

"Looks like you're the one who can't do a thing, Skulker. Now tell us how you got through! And where you got that heat shield."

"My technology is more powerful than you know, ghost boy." Skulker's whole body started to glow red. "Your little tricks won't work on me anymore!" With a huge _hiss_ sound, the ice cracked, steam jetted into the air, and Skulker broke free, his heat-shield deploying around him once again. A chunk of ice smashed into Danny and knocked him into a wall. "You should learn to shoot first, and ask questions never."

Danny was stuck against the wall. Skulker looked at me. He pushed another button on his wrist, and his arm transformed into a new kind of laser cannon, something he had definitely never used before. But it was a ghost weapon and it fired ghost energy, that much I was sure of; so I trusted my Spectre Deflector to work, and kept focusing on my concentration; I was almost ready to let loose a maelstrom of energy that would fry every circuit. I was sure it would work.

I was wrong.

When the shot came near, the Spectre Deflector launched an ecto-shield; but the shot kept going like nothing was there. It seemed unreal at first; that searing bolt of energy passing through the green barrier and connecting with my stomach. Impossible, right? No one actually gets shot – no one who would really be hurt badly, anyway. That's what you think, right up until it happens. You feel this impossible blister of pain, worse than anything you've ever felt before, and the only words going through your mind are, "This can't be happening. This is impossible. Someone's going to save me from this because it could never actually happen to me, right?"

But it's too late.

The momentum of the shot knocked me off my feet and I skidded across the floor, clutching at my stomach. I could feel blood seeping out, and was almost too shocked to scream. I was still trying to figure out if the blast had actually gone all the way through me, or if I was still in one piece. My basic instincts couldn't be held off for long, though.

I screamed, louder and harder than I ever had. My world reduced to that red-hot point of searing agony, spreading waves across my skin so that I couldn't even tell where the wound ended and where I began anymore. I was dimly aware that a fight was happening, more one-liners being exchanged, but nothing mattered compared to the burning, the open swelling and pouring out feeling near my gut.

I thought I was going to die.

And when that thought crossed my mind, something shifted inside me. Perhaps being near-death made me closer to the spirit world, but for some reason, my magic felt stronger. My mind was focused. The pulsing injury was also an ecto-pulse; my own body was the locus of the current in the air. I was a lightning rod. And I was mad as hell.

Keeping one hand clutched to my bleeding stomach, I used the other to trace my sigil. I couldn't see clearly, my eyes blurry from the tears and pain, but I could _feel_ where Skulker was through the current. I knew what he really was – a tiny, insignificant creature housed inside a ghostly robot. I felt out that creature's presence and formed a storm of energy around him. I pushed, with all of my mental energy; I willed every bit of my own pain and anger and surprise into pure strength. I felt Skulker's pulse weaken significantly.

The pulse of my own pain spiked. I screamed again, clutched both of my hands to my stomach, and collapsed backwards, my head falling hard against the metal lab floor; just before losing consciousness, I saw Jazz and Maddie running towards me with medical supplies, and felt Danny's chilling touch under my cheek.

I came to in a hospital bed, feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. I was propped up on pillows and had an IV in my hand. My clothes were gone, replaced with scrubs – when the hell did _that_ happen? – and the TV on the wall in front of me was turned to some local story about a pet monkey feeding a sick turtle. I might've found it a charming display of animal goodness if I didn't also feel like throwing up.

"Ugh…I'm gonna be sick," I said, leaning over the side of my bed to find a bucket already provided. I used it, flopped back on the pillows, and offered a "thanks" to the nurse who'd been holding it.

"It's okay," said a familiar voice. "Eyewitness filler makes me want to hurl, too."

"Tucker!"

I turned my head – a bit too fast, wincing from the sudden pain in my stomach – to see that none other than the youngest mayor in Amityville Park, not a nurse, was holding the bucket. He grinned at my pain-struck face. "Nice to see you too, Sam."

I gave a fake-angry sigh and returned to lying on my back. "Thanks, Tucker. It is good to see you. What are you doing here, anyway? What happened? …where's Danny?"

I heard him set the bucket down and call for a nurse to take it away. "Well I'm here because now that Danny's your boyfriend, I'm your best friend. And someone needed to take care of you."

"But you hate hospitals. And don't you have, you know, Mayor-stuff to do?" I tried to look at him by turning my head slightly and shifting my eyes, but even that proved too much. I sighed heavily and settled in to my pillows a bit deeper.

"Hey, I can handle a ghost-hospital, I can handle this," he said. "And I've got assistants to cover for me in times of emergency. And when the hero of Amityville Park goes missing at the same time as one of his best teammates gets incapacitated? It's an emergency. Try to stay still, by the way, you're on a loooot of pills right now."

I blinked heavily, trying to process everything he just said. I stared up at the TV and wished I could move my arms enough to make a sigil so I could blow the thing to pieces. It had gone on to a commercial about diet and weight loss miracle solutions. But my arms felt like limp noodles – must've been those pills Tucker mentioned. Wait.

"Danny's missing?"

"He's been gone for almost two days," Tucker said, shifting around to the front of the bed so he could look at me. "No one knows where he went. Do you?"

"Wait, slow down," I said, feeling sick all over again for brand new reasons. "I don't even know what happened. How has it been two whole days? Why am I in the hospital? I remember fighting a ghost with Danny…and then…"

"Sam…"

Tucker leaned forward and lifted up the bottom hem of my scrub shirt to reveal thick bandages wrapped all the way around my midriff. There were still bloodstains on parts. "Oh," I said. "That's right. I got shot." The words dropped like lead weights into my stomach, blowing out my heart as they went. I remembered the shock and confusion. I looked at Tucker and tried to retain some composure. "How bad was it?"

He whipped out a PDA and crunched some numbers, and gave them a heavy look before turning his eyes on me. "Let's just say the numbers weren't in your favor, Sam. Skulker had a new weapon in his armor, some kind of anti-Fenton particle beam. It neutralized the wavelengths on your Spectre Deflector. It's some kind of miracle you survived. You got shot clean through."

Clean? No, nothing clean about it; it still felt ragged on the inside, nothing like the precision a laser-blast ought to inspire; like I'd been scooped out with a rusty garden tool. "I see. Guess that makes me pretty lucky, then. What happened after that?"

"Jazz told me that Skulker got fried inside his cockpit somehow. No one knows how that happened, and he looked worse than anyone's every seen a ghost look before. Danny's parents confiscated the armor after throwing Skulker back in the Ghost Zone, and Danny flew you here to the hospital. As soon as they had you stable, he disappeared!"

Skulker looked that bad? I wondered if I had made some kind of progress with my spells. Had my anger been so great that I actually started to undo Skulker's conscious remnants? Had I really almost killed him? But I couldn't worry about that; Danny was missing and that could mean serious trouble…

"Have there been any other ghost attacks since Danny left?" I asked, closing my eyes in an attempt to stay calm.

"Just one," Tucker said, frowning. "Johnny 13 showed up. He caused a huge ruckus in the middle of town. He was trying to draw Danny out for a fight, I think. When Danny didn't show, Johnny went right back to the Ghost Zone."

I gave a sigh of relief. "Good, I'm glad nothing else happened."

"Something _did_ happen, though. Johnny's Shadow was HUGE! It was big as a building, but still fast. And apparently Johnny said something about 'trying out his new power.' Johnny's got a new power, Skulker's got a new weapon…it's like all the ghosts are getting stronger at once."

Tucker struck a thoughtful pose, pushing his mayoral hat off his brow. He was no dummy, after all, even if he was a carnivore.

"We think you're right," I said. "Danny and Jazz and I were talking about it after the Box Ghost attacked. We think someone is pulling the strings here. They're super-charging the ghosts and then testing them out to see what they can accomplish."

"But who would do that? Only Plasmius is crazy enough to go through all of that just to take out Danny, and he's…well, gone." Tucker suddenly perked up. "Wait! I've got it! It must be one of Plasmius' evil clones!"

I gave him a flat look.

"What? All super villains have evil clones made of them at some point or another."

"Wouldn't the evil clone of a super villain be, I don't know, good?"

He deflated. "Never mind."

"We need to keep trying to figure out what's going on, so keep coming up with ideas if you can." I tried to take a deep breath, felt my diaphragm explode in pain, and gasped. "Okay, that's really inconvenient," I said through my wincing. "Look, I think I might know where Danny went. Before Skulker attacked, Danny and I talked about visiting Frostbite and Clockwork. They're two of the smartest ghosts we know. He probably went to go see them. We should go after him."

Tucker put a light hand on my shoulder that felt like a barrel of bricks. "Sam, 'we' aren't going anywhere. It's a miracle you're even alive right now! You're going to stay right here. Jazz and I can go into the Ghost Zone to find Danny. You need to get better. Danny would kill us if we found him and you weren't okay."

I opened my mouth to argue, but instead of words, all that came out was sounds of pain from my stomach.

"I rest my case," he said, more smugly than he needed to. "Don't worry. We can take care of it. Just because I'm mayor doesn't mean I've lost my touch. I'm still a technogeek, ghost-fighting extraordinaire."

I sighed. "Just be careful, okay? We really don't know what we're dealing with anymore. If Skulker really shot right through the Spectre Deflector, then who knows what could happen next?"

"Relax, Sam. We'll be fine. Now rest up, okay?"

He gave my hand a friendly squeeze, then left the room. Left me to my pain and contemplation.

I couldn't help but laugh a little at the Gothicism of it. The pastel blues and yellows of the hospital weren't exactly the colors I'd have picked for my parlor of solitude and worry, but the theme was certainly present. I was bleeding, bandaged, basically helpless, barely alive in some respects, and totally alone while my friends faced unknown dangers with no certainty of safe return. In some respects, this was nothing new, but it felt different this time. None of us had ever come _this_ close to dying before.

I thought Danny probably felt the same way, which would explain his hurry to find out anything he could about the situation. But I was worried about him going into the Ghost Zone by himself when it seemed like there was a strategic campaign in effect to organize everyone in the Ghost Zone against him, specifically. If it had really been almost two days, why wasn't he back yet?

Exhausted and worried, endlessly turning over the profiles of ghosts we'd faced before in an effort to find a clue, I gradually fell asleep.

I dreamed…

An elaborately painted eye.

Blue flames.

A song I couldn't quite remember.

Ego. Passion. Revenge.

"Eventually…even ghosts pass on."

Denial. Rage.

"There's only one thing in my way!"

The music again, louder. The flames, higher.

A fan. Ribbed and folding; fanning the flames.

Small bells, dingling.

Purple arcs of energy in negative space.

A mental whipcrack, and I was staring at myself, my body, with a gaping hole where I'd been shot; those arcs of purple energy cascading through it, around it, around me.

A sense of encouragement. Righteous anger. Motion.

The song I couldn't remember, then the bells.

A flash of purple light.

Hourglasses. Clocks. Changing age.

"He's waiting for you, Sam."

Bells. Terror.

Clocks.

_Hunger_.

I bolted awake, sitting upright, and immediately regretting it. I lied back down and clenched my stomach, but found that it hurt less than I expected it to. In fact it seemed to be getting better very rapidly. I tried to turn my mind back to the dream; yes, there had been something about my energy and my wound. Had my subconscious been trying to communicate something to me?

I tried to lift my right arm, found it doable. I traced a sigil over my wound and focused my will into it, tried to shape the energy of the currents around me into something like what I'd felt in the dream; it seemed wild, but the worst that could happen would be a mild shock, and something about it just felt right. I pushed with my will and felt a soothing sensation spread through me; the pain faded. Even some of my energy returned.

As my mind cleared more from the sleep-haze, I realized something was wrong; something was around my neck – a golden medallion with a clock symbol on the front. I couldn't piece everything together yet, but two things were clear: based on the success of the spell I'd just learned, this was an incredibly important dream; and Clockwork was somehow a part of it. I needed to go see Clockwork, and _now_. I tried my other arm – better. I tried to stand, and had no trouble. I wouldn't say I felt better than ever, but I felt good enough to make an errand into the Ghost Zone. I wasn't in a hurry to get shot again, but something about those flames…that fan…those bells.

I didn't know how I knew, but I could tell that we were about to run out of time. Part of my magic was the developing of intuition and I wasn't about to ignore it now. Especially not when the insignia of the very ghost I meant to see was suddenly hanging on my shoulders.

I found my cell phone next to my bed and called up a family assistant to get me checked out of the hospital with a change of clothes, and with the crooked palm-greasing our money afforded I was out of there in minutes, paperwork be damned. Yes, my sudden improvement was too bizarre and would need to be submitted as a case study, but that would have to wait.

It was late at night. But with echoes of flame, clocks and that last, emphatic hunger in my mind, I wasn't going to wait for anything. Danny had a copy of his keys made for me a long time ago, and so I entered Fentonworks without trouble. I "borrowed" a Jack and Maddie latest, the Fenton Ghost Flyer Mk. III, a personal ecto-craft for high-speed Ghost Zone exploration. I traced one last sigil for protection, set my sights on Clockwork's realm, and took off.

* * *

As always, thank you very much for reading and reviewing! I think I'm starting to find the flow of this story so if we're lucky, good things should be quickly forthcoming. Hope you enjoy!

-R


	4. Gears and Currents

Chapter 4

Being in the Ghost Zone again with my newly developed magical skill was an assault to my senses; I could practically _see_ the subtle lines of power flowing through the space around me. I could sense ghostly presences from beyond the various gateways. I could detect the lingering remnants of consciousness that had yet to grow strong enough to form full Ghostly forms; pockets of awareness drifting through space.

And the power. Dear gods, the power.

On Earth, I had to draw a sigil for focus, and hope there was a strong ecto-pulse nearby in order to activate the latent currents, even to be able to try something; here, the ecto-energy was so bountiful that I practically felt it in my veins. All it would take was a tiny symbol and push, and I could manipulate the ecto-energy as good as any ghost, probably better than some. The pain in my gut didn't matter – being a human in the Ghost Zone, pain becomes ephemeral – and without that distraction, I was free to focus directly on the matters at hand.

Clockwork.

I focused the energies around the Mk. III, creating a spearhead through the drag of the space, and adding extra thrust to the engines. Clockwork claimed to be a neutral protector of the time flow, but I knew he was a meddler, and I didn't know why he was meddling yet. I was in a hurry to found out, but I wasn't going to storm in there expecting a warm welcome. He may have helped heal my wound, but I still had no idea what to expect.

Between the Fenton's new tech and my added power, it didn't take long for me to arrive in Clockwork's domain. I dismounted the Mk. III and stood in the cathedral-like home of the time ghost, looking, feeling, waiting. My intuition drew my gaze to a pedestal near the collection of time-viewing-portals, a Romanesque number that seemed oddly out of place. I moved closer to it and saw that the words "Danny Phantom" were written across its base. A slow chill crept up my spine as I wondered what that meant.

I turned to watch the time-viewing-portals. These were not labeled, and so I had no idea when I was looking at, but it was pretty clear _what_ I was looking at: destruction. What surprised me was that no ghosts were involved; it appeared to be a purely man-made affair. Guns, lasers, missiles, tanks; no ghosts. War, in its ugliest human shapes and sizes, on every screen. I turned away and shuddered.

"Are you scared, Sam Manson?"

The chills in my spine started running in laps. This wasn't the first time I'd ever seen or heard Clockwork but his presence was impossibly disquieting; his spirit was, as close as I could figure, eternal. Eternity is not something humans are really equipped to deal with. But there he was; a ghostly vapor trail at his waist, time staff in hand, and that subtly mocking expression on his red-eyed face as he floated down from above, hovering in front of me.

"Yes," I said, steadily as I could. "But not because of you."

"No, no, of course not," he replied, somewhere between acknowledgement and sarcasm; somehow both at once. "You're scared because of the war."

"I'm scared because someone's trying to kill Danny." I tried to stare levelly at him, but in the blink of an eye, he was gone; I sensed his motion, though, and was able to turn and see him again, this time in his old-man guise, floating by the time portals. "And I don't know who it is or how to stop them."

"And you want my advice on this matter." He gazed into the portals, shifting between ages as he blinked from sight to sight, ageless thoughts churning behind his glowing red eyes. "Why do you think I would help you?"

My heart wanted to sink and that chill in my spine told me to back down and leave, but I wasn't going to be deterred just like that. "I wasn't sure you would, at least not before." I took the medallion off my neck and held it out towards him. "But since you sent me this, I thought you might feel like helping."

He laughed in a way I couldn't interpret. I swallowed down my fear and tried to focus on watching him so that he couldn't surprise me with another blink. As if aware of what I was doing, he instead just floated lazily back towards me. He took the medallion and examined it.

"Yes, I see you got my invitation. Good." He closed his hand around the medallion, and it vanished. "You wanted to come here because you wanted to ask for my help in protecting Danny, but the reason you are here is because I wanted to see you in person. Like you, I am very troubled by what I see in these portals." He paused, cracked an impossibly eerie smile. "The Earth is in danger again, and I don't know if its people will be able to avert the coming disaster. It is…extremely serious."

Still smiling. I couldn't bring myself to ask why. I knew Clockwork wouldn't find the end of the Earth amusing, since it would also mean the end of the Ghost Zone. I was honestly afraid to find out what could make a being like him smile like that.

"So you need to offer some guidance to us, without directly intervening," I offered.

"That's right," he replied, suddenly a baby-form, but with that same smug look on his face. "You always were smarter than the rest of them, Sam. I've had the most fun watching you develop. Especially with this so-called…magic. It intrigues me."

Okay, being stalked by the Ghost of Time was disturbing, but somewhat expected; it was his job to keep an eye on literally everyone. My magic being of interest to him, however, was _not_ expected. "Really?" I said, feeling some of that power return to me, while trying to stay calm and collected. "And why is that?"

This time he grinned and showed teeth. I shuddered again.

"It's an unusual situation. I can give you all the information you need to do exactly what you want with that magic, but to do so would upset the flow of time, and the balance of the world…on the other hand, if I don't give you some of the information, well…" He looked off at the time portals for a moment, then back at me. "The outcome seems fairly certain. It is a conundrum."

I stared at him, and he stared at me. I couldn't keep it up; I had to turn to look at something else. The time portals seemed an obvious choice, horrifying though they were, and it was difficult to avoid focusing on. "This is what's going to happen if I don't learn how to kill ghosts with my magic?"

He didn't say anything. I figured that meant "probably."

I sighed, growing frustrated with the ambiguities and feeling an ever-increasing urgency in my gut to get the hell out of there and go help Danny. I turned back to Clockwork, who was still watching me, and mustered up my will. "Look, before I can do anything about this war, I have to help Danny. I won't be able to learn anything if I'm still worried about him."

"I'm afraid you don't have a choice."

The voice came from behind me; Clockwork again. I guess my concentration must have lapsed while saying something so bold, because I never even felt him moving. I turned to see him in his elder form, pondering the pedestal with Danny's name on it. "What do you mean?" I asked, moving towards the pedestal, feeling power start to drain out of me in apprehension.

"Danny Phantom," he said, contemplating the words like they held some kind of secret. "Your...friend. He is in danger for the same reason the Earth is in danger. They share the same enemy. To protect him, you must defeat…him." On the second "him," Clockwork stared at the top of the pedestal, now appearing conspicuously vacant. "I'm sure, if you think about it, you'll realize what I mean."

This was taxing my patience. I had to fight down an actual growl of anger. "You of all people should know we don't have time for that, Clockwork. If this is one of those, 'his real enemy is his own fear' type lessons, can you save it for the after school special? According to those time portals the entire world is about to erupt in war. Who am I fighting? And how do I stop them?"

I was trembling now. Although I didn't think Clockwork would actually try to fight me – I don't think it was allowed – yelling at a being that was at least as old as humanity itself was a very unsettling thing to do. But the faintest sense of relief did come; a touch of weariness appeared on the old ghost's face, a hint of kindness, even.

The relief turned into cold dread when I saw that kindness give way to a trace of fear – Clockwork was the one who was afraid here, and that chilled me to the core. Even my wound started to hurt again as I listened to his answer.

"The rules are simple, Sam. I can't tell you much. But I can point you in the right direction. You're fighting another magician, one who has become very powerful at controlling ghosts. So much so that I can't even view him anymore…he has eluded my grasp completely. And in doing so, he has taken something that was my responsibility. It will be your job, as a human magician yourself, to become powerful enough to challenge him, and to stop the ghosts in his command…permanently."

The air grew colder; the space itself seemed to reverberate with the dread of Clockwork himself telling me to do this. And I could tell there was more to it than he was letting on, but figured I wouldn't be getting much else, which only added to my unease.

"So tell me. Is it possible to stop a ghost permanently without killing its consciousness?" I asked.

"I think that's a trivial matter compared to the real conundrum for you," he said. "You see, if I teach you how to stop a ghost once and for all, whatever that may come to mean, you will be strong enough to stand as a threat to me. Thus, you will stand as a threat to all life and order. Even if you have no intention of using that power for evil, having it at all makes you extremely unsafe. I might have to send someone after you, next."

He wasn't kidding. He didn't seem to like the idea very much, but he didn't show any remorse about it either. Suddenly I had the feeling I'd made a mistake in coming here.

"So you're going to use me to do your dirty work and then have me killed?" I asked, trying to fight down panic.

"It isn't clear," he said, drifting back to his time portals. "Even I can never know for certain what will happen."

I suppressed a violent response about how he should at least know for certain what _he_ would do, and was then struck by the sobering reality that he really might not know. Uncertainty in the Ghost of Time meant things really were at a catastrophic level.

"Look," I said, fighting to remain calm, "if the enemy is a magician, then he's the one we have to stop, right? Maybe you don't need to teach me the ghost-killing magic. I don't really like the idea of knowing how to do that, either."

"As I said before, Sam Manson, I'm afraid you don't have a choice."

He blinked again, this time to right in front of me, and hovering upside down no less, in a ghostly mock-up of that stupid Spiderman kiss; his body turned around like a hand on a clock, those burning red eyes fixed on my own, and suddenly, his dead hands were clasping both of my own. There was a slight shock, and he backed away, leaving me to look down at the objects which had now appeared in my hands; a violet in one, and an emerald in the other.

"They represent your souls," he said. "One for you and one for him. They match your eyes. It's rather poetic, actually." Again, his voice an impossible combination of sarcasm and genuine acknowledgement. "They will amplify your power, and act as a local focus of your will. Wherever they are, you can be. Reflect on these items well, and you will understand how to stop a ghost."

He turned invisible, but as he said, the items in my hands amplified my power and I could easily sense his movement through the ecto-currents. He was circling me.

"Use these gifts wisely, Sam. As you are so keenly aware, we are very…short…on time."

And then he was gone; presence simply vanished. I didn't know if he had frozen time long enough to amble away or if he used some other strange power to do it, but that was clearly all of the information I was going to get. Cryptic warnings of impossible enemies, the promise of killing and death, and not even a hint as to where or how I might solve any of these problems beyond two mysterious objects in my hands. A violet and an emerald.

They were warm, with a strong ecto-pulse. Following instinct, I managed to tuck the violet in my hair, and secured the emerald in a skirt pocket. I felt strong, very strong; but strong enough to kill? Even though I had basically been ordered to, I was having serious doubts. Was there some other way? Did it even matter? Regardless, I didn't seem to have time to figure out anything; with the currents around me I could practically feel the sense of events progressing, spiraling out of control.

A mad magician was bringing together an army of ghosts to destroy Danny, and then, somehow, cause a world war. Tucker and Jazz were about to enter the ghost zone to try to find Danny, where we could all be sitting ducks. Something, though I couldn't figure out what, was completely out of place in Clockwork's realm, and he seemed to be relying on me to fix it. And somehow, his warnings seemed to be suggesting that Danny himself was the one I was going to have to defeat. It was way too much, way too fast; I couldn't figure it out on my own, just standing in an empty cathedral of time.

Clutching the emerald in my pocket, I jumped back into the Fenton Ghost Flyer Mk. III and charted a course for Frostbite's realm, hoping that I could make it before anything else could happen to Danny.

But once I was in the open waters of the Ghost Zone, and with my new items thrumming like a beacon in the ecto-currents, it was only a matter of moments before something else happened to me.

I was focused on pushing onwards to Frostbite, so I didn't even notice her until she crashed into the side of my Flyer. She sent me into a tailspin, but I was able to recover, and brought the Mk. III around so I could see my assailant. Flashes from my dream came back to me as I studied her appearance. It was different than the old tours, that was true; the outfit had been updated to something almost uniform-like, having lost most of the edge that her rebellious music had centered on. And the hair, though still blue and burning, was somehow hanging down by her shoulders, fiery shapes licking upwards towards her ears. Even the guitar was different, the flying v much more pronounced, and large enough for her to stand on, riding it like a surfboard. But that eye – the elaborately painted eye, filled with hate – that was just the same.

"Ember," I said, gritting my teeth. "What's with the new look? You getting ready for another come back tour?"

She didn't answer, but all of her fire seemed to emanate from the blue-hot coals of her eyes, staring me down. I waited, trying to figure out my next move; I didn't know if I could outrun her, and I didn't want to lead her straight to Danny anyway. But I didn't know if I could beat her on my own, especially since I hadn't been able to test any of my power yet. For the time being, I just returned her stare, thinking.

"I've been looking for you," she finally said. "Your spirit, your sound, it's always what stops me! But not this time. I'm going to stamp out your fire once and for all. Everyone will remember my name when I kill Danny Phantom's _girlfriend._"

Catty venom, check. But it was colder than it used to be, and definitely more serious.

As if to confirm my thoughts, she kicked a button on the guitar and fired a sonic blast that barely missed me, and blew a nearby asteroid to bits. I decided that I couldn't take any chances with something like that happening to the Mk. III, as I could tell I was going to need it to complete the tasks ahead. My intuition was speaking to me, and it had worked so far, so I wasn't going to start ignoring it now.

I focused my will into the emerald, left it on the seat, and punched the "autopilot" button on the console. I climbed out, touching the violet in my hair, and focused the energy around me into a cushion. I was floating, and could use the energy to move, just like a ghost; and the Mk. III was shielded, and flying on its own towards Frostbite's realm.

I faced down Ember, and she stared at me, still nothing but cold hatred on that painted face. "You're going to regret going solo against me."

I kept one hand on the violet and used the other to trace a sigil, hoping she was wrong.

As always, thank you so much for reading and reviewing, and for your patience as I work on updates! You are very considerate and wonderful. Hope things are moving along well for you~

-R


	5. Fanning the Flames

Chapter 5

Later, I would have time to look back and reflect on the twisted beauty of doing ghostly battle with a renowned musician in the open seas of an alternate dimension, floating in ectoplasmic currents and manifesting wills into reality. I would probably fill volumes of gothic poetry books, maybe even write a few songs, definitely use it as material at the next goth poetry reading. I would meditate on the haunting interplay of majesty and terror and, through this darkness, have another way of affirming life.

But with hypersonic blasts scorching my cheeks and crumbled bits of ghost rocks threatening to slash me open, it was a little hard to concentrate on those things in the moment.

As for the ghost rocks, being a human I could phase through them if I spared the concentration to flex my humanly intangibility. But that proved hard to do while also concentrating on staying afloat, keeping a shield raised against Ember's variety of attacks, and trying to build up a counter of my own. I kept it in mind as a last resort while focusing on basic survival.

Ember was, above all, _fast_. Sound was her element and she traveled almost as quickly, riding on her guitar, flames bursting out of her skull like booster packs behind her. I felt energy swirling around the violet in my hair and it was easy enough to access it, but it still required a lot of focus to turn that energy into the things I needed: lift, maneuverability, speed. She circled me, firing blasts that I dodged or deflected, while she tried to force me into the next spray of shattered asteroid. But I was focused, determined, and I refused to be taken down just like that.

Never mind that this was my first real toe-to-toe battle with my magic; never mind that Ember seemed more powerful than ever; it was like the diva had said, I had a sound of my own to sing, and I had to believe it could shut her down.

Believing that was almost enough to work.

I was able to lasso one of the shattered ghost rocks and use its own momentum to hurl it back at Ember. It connected with her guitar and knocked her off; both of them landed on a nearby asteroid. I moved towards her, and threw down the purple cage that was my shock-field around her. This time it was a hundred times more powerful than what I'd used to trap Danny a few days ago, and I felt confident that it would hold against anything she tried.

"Alright, Ember," I said, slowly descending to stand in front of her as she pulled herself up to sitting. "Let's talk. I remember seeing you in my dream. I know you're involved with this ghost army, and I know you're after Danny. Why? What's in it for you?"

She scoffed at me, picked up her guitar, and played a few chords. Nothing happened; I realized she wasn't attacking me, she was ignoring me. I frowned hard at her.

"Listen Ember, you aren't doing yourself any favors by ignoring me. I'm not going to let you go until you talk, but I can't promise I won't get bored and just leave you here until I have time to come back. I'm kind of in a hurry and I am _not_ in the mood for this."

All I got was a sneer. The painted eye, and a few more chords.

I sighed.

"You're more powerful than you were the last time we met. Is it the guitar? Because I can do something about that."

That seemed to catch her interest. She held the guitar a bit closer, protectively even, and finally started watching me.

"That's right. I'll blow it to pieces if I have to. I'm sick of dealing with you and the other ghosts, always trying to hurt us! The only thing we ever did to you was to _stop_ you from hurting people. And frankly, we've been very nice about it so far. But you…you want to kill us. Well how would you feel…" I leaned closer, feeling the power start to flow through me again, in that rage-blind way it had when I first entered the Ghost Zone with my magic. "How would you feel if we started coming after you?"

I touched a hand to my violet, traced a sigil with the other. Lines of power raced along the surface of the asteroid we rested on, under the shock field I'd erected around her, and coursed into her guitar. It exploded.

"What…" She looked at me with dumb shock. "What…did…you…DO! How dare you! This was a gift from my producer! When he finds out what you did….let me go. Let me GO, damn it! I'll kill you with my bare hands if I have to!"

"No," I said, standing my ground. "I'm going to kill you with _my_ bare hands."

I said it with more conviction than I felt – I wasn't even sure I understood _how _to kill a ghost, never mind whether or not I would – but she froze in fear anyway.

"You…you can't kill me. I'm a ghost. I'm already dead. What are you talking about…"

It wasn't a question. In fact, it seemed like she had already been afraid that someone might try this. I gave an evil smirk.

"You're still talking to me, so clearly, you aren't dead enough. You wanna die more, that can be arranged. So tell me. Who are you working for? You mentioned a producer. Who is he and what does he want with Danny?"

Her fear turned to anger, barely bitten back, but even though she stood defiantly, the edges of my shock-field crackling angrily around her hair, she didn't make a move. It seemed she was measuring her response; maybe she was testing my own resolve?

The pain in my stomach came back with a vengeance, and I winced, gritting my teeth.

I wasn't in the mood to be tested.

"Last chance, Ember. Tell me something useful right this second or I undo your microphone arm. You'll never be able to form it again."

I was dead serious this time. I held a hand to my violet again, the other one pointed straight at her right arm. I sensed out the flow of the ecto-currents around us, between us, within us. Using the violet as a focus, I could feel the edges of my will grace against hers as I prodded the boundaries of that arm. And, almost instinctively, I sensed the mechanisms I could use to sever that part of her will. A whole portion of her being, cut off, and then permanently undone. It was gruesome, but I have to admit…a part of me liked it.

But just as I was preparing to make those preliminary snips, my concentration was shaken by a massive shockwave in the ecto-currents, and I fell over from the disruption, my shock-field fading. Ember ran to the far side of the asteroid and leapt off the edge. I pulled myself up to my feet and followed her, and found that she had landed on what appeared to be a large wooden plank, with a man standing at the far end.

He looked into my eyes with a gaze that felt like it could see beyond the veils of death and even oblivion itself. I felt hollowed out just by seeing them; their presence was so powerful that it obscured all other details about the man. All I could make out was the impossible depth of knowledge contained in his eyes. It was terrifying.

Then, the sound of bells; the plank spread open, revealing itself to be a giant fan. It tossed Ember upwards, floated to meet her, and gave one massive fanning motion. It sent her flying back towards me, and I narrowly avoided her crashing into me. I looked back to see what the fan would do next, and where the man on top of it was now, but both were gone.

"Stay focused, Sam," I heard Ember say in a voice uncommonly menacing. I turned back towards her and saw that her hair was bigger and fierier than ever, vermillion tongues flickering in her locks. She had a new guitar in hand, also of an intensely fiery nature. The strings even seemed to be made of molten metal. "Don't take your eyes off the star of the show!"

She flew towards me brandishing her guitar like a club. I was able to throw up just enough protection, thanks to my violet, to take the brunt of the hit on my arm and escape uninjured, but it sent me skidding to the far edge of the asteroid, and Ember showed no sign of relenting. "Guess I should've taken Skulker's advice," I muttered to myself, tracing another sigil in the hopes of focusing my power.

"You're going to pay for what you did," she said, twisting the dials on her guitar. "Try out my new sound – _DARK METAL!_"

She chugged a few lurching chords, and all the eerie light of the Ghost Zone began to fade. I built energy around me to try to stay safe from whatever was coming, but I couldn't guess what it would be. Finally the darkness was near complete, with only a small bit of light between the two of us. Sound was heightened; and I heard the sound of slashing blades. "Dark metal" indeed.

I pushed everything I had into my shield, and felt a massive force connect with it; to my right, at shoulder level, an axe had flown out of the darkness and connected with the shield, and was now making repeated hacks at it. I felt every blow in my mind. It wasn't as painful as actually being chopped up with an axe, but I wasn't exactly pleasant either. And as I was getting used to the sensation enough to muster a counterattack, a sword was hurled from somewhere behind Ember, and connected with my shield right in front of my face, dazzling the darkness with purple sparks. It started sawing at the shield, adding a new kind of grating feeling to my concentration.

More weapons came. Ember just gave a cold chuckle. But just as I thought the combined pressure of the "dark metal" hacking away at my shield would finally win through, I had an idea. It was risky – if I did it wrong I'd be cut to pieces – but it just might give me the upper hand I needed here. With one hand on the violet and the other directing my energies, I concentrated the last reserves around me to give me ghostly flight, focused on my body, and dropped the shield.

The weapons came hurling at me. But I was no longer there; I had phased into the asteroid beneath me with the "humans in the ghost zone" property. Instead of colliding with me, the weapons collided with each other, excepting one: a spear which had been drilling in towards the small of my back flew straight through the fray and connected with Ember's gut.

She was run completely through, just like Skulker's new gun had done to my stomach earlier. The spear had flown clear through her and was now beyond the veil of darkness Ember had set up, leaving a big, ecto-dripping hole in her. She seemed surprised. Truthfully, so was I; I had no idea what would happen if a ghost blade hit her. I definitely wasn't expecting it to leave a gaping wound. I phased back up to stand on the asteroid and raised a shield again, waiting to see whether disemboweling would prove enough to stop her.

"Look what you did," she rasped. "Do you have any idea how much this HURTS?"

"Yes," I said, genuinely irritated now. I pulled up the hem of my shirt to show her the bandages I still had wrapped around my wound. "Your buddy Skulker SHOT me in the same place, and I'm just a human. And I know you know something about that. My intuition is screaming like a siren. What the hell is going on, Ember?"

She smiled. I tried not to shudder.

"Skulker got you, eh? You're so dead. This isn't even worth my time. Go run to your precious _boyfriend_. It won't do either of you any good. I'm leaving."

The darkness began to fade as Ember climbed on to her guitar, floating into the air. I wanted to yell at her to stop; to try to beat her down; but mentioning the wound Skulker gave me made it hurt more, to the point of distraction. Moreover, I was barely overcoming my own fear – Ember's words seemed like more than an idle threat, and I didn't trust that I could handle another "dark metal" attack with such finesse. And who knew what other tricks she might have? For the moment I was prepared to count myself lucky I'd gotten out of this fight alive.

As if she sensed my pending relief, she gave me a dirty look. "One last tip for you, goth-girl: a flower in the flame will always _burn_."

On the word "burn," her hair erupted into a volcanic scream of fire and thrust, blasting her into the far reaches of the Ghost Zone and blowing the asteroid beneath me to pieces. Barely protected by my shielding, I was sent flying, and it took a bit to recover balance. Hanging in that empty space, littered with broken rocks, I tried to catch my breath and regain focus. I channeled some energy into my wound, trying to soothe it like I had in the hospital, while I thought over what just happened.

Ember was on the ropes, but some man riding a giant fan had somehow given her a massive power boost. I suspected that man was the magician I was after, which did nothing to relieve my fears; all I could remember were his eyes, and they were terrible enough that the memory still left me shaky. It felt like they were still watching me from inside my retinas, an idea which I did not find altogether impossible, if he really was the magician in question. If he could give all that power to Ember…how strong was he?

On the other hand, even though I had barely made it out alive, Ember was wary enough of me that she decided to leave without winning. She played it off with lots of bravado, but she was a performer, after all; I could tell, now that the moment had passed, that she was feeling pretty uncertain of her ability to win after getting gored by her own attack. Can't say I blamed her for that.

But she _was _certain that I was going to die. Why?

There was no time for me to wonder. I had to get to Frostbite's realm and rendezvous with Danny. I scanned the ecto-currents for traces of the emerald I'd left in the Fenton Ghost Flyer Mk. III, and pushed off in that direction.

That was when the utter exhaustion hit me, and I came to a dead stop. It was all I could do just to float there. It was all adding up: a too-speedy recovery from the hospital, immediately followed by a sojourn into the Ghost Zone, a disturbing encounter with the eternal Ghost of Time, and a life-or-death battle with Ember, with no virtually no rest in between? I was beat. The adrenaline was gone and my body was sore from bruises, my brain sore from effort.

I started to regret having sent my ship off without me.

While I tried to find the right curses for the situation, however, I heard a familiar voice.

"Sam!"

"Tucker?"

I looked up, looked around, and saw none other than Tucker and Jazz flying towards me in the Fenton Ghost Flyer Mk. II, an earlier version of my personal flyer, but with a lot more cabin space. I breathed a sigh of relief. They opened the cockpit beneath me and I fell lazily inside, finally able to let my concentration slip away completely with solid, padded chairs beneath me.

"_Sam_, what were you thinking?" Jazz shouted, swarming me. "You're supposed to be in the hospital! What are you doing out here all by yourself? You had us all worried sick!"

"Back off, Jazz," Tucker said, coming to sit next to me. "Did you see all those explosions? She was in some kind of fight. Let her breathe for a second, alright?"

Jazz took a deep breath of her own. "You're right. Are you okay, Sam?"

I gave a weak nod, feeling the exhaustion really seep into my bones now that they had something solid to support them. I resisted the urge to pass out, opting instead to explain everything that happened so far to the best of my ability. I wasn't thrilled about telling Jazz and Tucker that I was expected to kill ghosts – and possibly even a human magician on top of them – but they needed to know what we were in for. I decided not to mention, however, that Clockwork might have a hit out on my own head by the time it was over.

While Tucker started piloting us to Frostbite's realm, we all debated the subject of ghost-killing.

"Just because Clockwork says you have to, doesn't mean there's really no other way," Jazz said. "Clockwork is the Time Ghost. Causality barely means anything to him, and he always talks in riddles. What if it's some kind of expedient device? Maybe he's just trying to get you powerful enough by making you _think_ you have to kill a ghost. Or what if it's a test of character?"

I sighed angrily. "Jazz, you're over-thinking this. There are lots of riddles with Clockwork, but he was pretty clear about what those riddles are. There is no 'if' in ghost-killing with him. There's only the matter of 'how.' That, and which ghosts to kill."

"So just because he told you all this, you're going to listen to him and do what he says?" Jazz replied.

"He is the ghost of all Time," Tucker said.

"And he helped heal my wound." I winced as I started thinking about the wound again, the pain flaring up through my torso. "Which is still killing me. I can't imagine how bad it would be if he hadn't helped."

"You guys!" Jazz flailed her arms in protest. "You can't just take someone's help as an excuse to kill on their behalf!"

"It's not on his behalf, it's for everyone," Tucker said. "There's a war coming that could destroy the whole planet. We have to stop it."

"No," Jazz said, pacing the cockpit. "No. That's what the U.N. is for. That's what government is for. That's not what we're for! We're supposed to protect Amity Park and drive off the attacks when they come. We can't just go on an assassination mission."

"Well, not all of us anyway," I said. "It would be too obvious. We don't even know where the enemy is yet and we can't just have all of us flying around aimlessly." Jazz gave me a pointed look, calling me on going off topic, and I made a soft sigh. "Clockwork was clear about this, Jazz: it's going to be me. And Danny's involved, somehow. So really if it's up to anyone, it's between him and me. I promised him I wouldn't kill a ghost if we didn't agree on it…I plan to stick to that if possible. But it isn't really up to you."

Jazz stared at me, dumbstruck. "Are you serious? Sam, this is a serious moral issue. Even if there's no law against killing ghosts, there IS a law against killing humans, and you're talking about killing this magician in charge of things, too. I'm not going to let my little brother's girlfriend turn into a murderer."

"It's not murder if you kill in self-defense," I spat, crossing my arms and looking away from her. "I don't understand how you don't get that these people aren't just starting a war, they've declared a manhunt on Danny. _Specifically_. And Ember has it out for me, _specifically_. What do you think the police or the army or the U.N. are going to do about that? Call the GhostBusters? We're the GhostBusters, Jazz! We pioneered this. No one else is equipped to do it right, and since it's our necks on the lines anyway, I don't see anything wrong with us handling it."

"What about the Men in White?" she asked, finally sitting down again. "They're government, and they're ghost hunters. Let them deal with it."

"That's a negatory," Tucker said. "They're bureaucrats. Takes them five minutes just to requisition the permission to draw a weapon. If Ember's as fast as Sam says she is, they wouldn't stand a chance."

Jazz worked her mouth silently for a while, trying to find the words, and finding nothing. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the floor. "I can't condone this. But I don't think I can stop you, either. Just please try to do the right thing, okay?"

I breathed deeply, trying to steady the sick, spinning motion I felt from the exhaustion, the drama, the wound in my stomach. "I hope I get the luxury of doing the right thing," I said, feeling myself start to fade.

My stomach flared in pain and brought me right back around. I clutched it, groaning aloud. The pain kept swelling, making it hard to breathe. The not-so-clean through shot felt more ragged than ever.

"Sam…what's going on?" Jazz asked.

"It feels like it's getting bigger," I managed to gasp. "Like it's just eating away at me or something!"

"Wait a second," Tucker said. "Ember said something about Skulker shooting you, didn't she?"

I tried to focus through the pain, pulled back the words from the fuzz of my mind. "Yeah…like it meant I was as good as dead, almost."

Jazz' eyes lit up with fear. "Sam, we never did any ghostly scans of your wound, we only did medical ones! What if Skulker's new weapon put some kind of ghost-poison in you?"

I wanted to dismiss it as another one of her crazy, overwrought ideas; I mean, a gunshot had gone all the way through me, it made sense that I would still hurt; but when my pain and my intuition both sang like breaking glass in my ears in response to her suggestion, I couldn't doubt it.

All I could do was scream in pain.

"Tucker, does the Mk. II have any ghost-medical equipment on board?"

They started looking, but I was already passing out. I tried to bite down on my pain and focus on the spell that Clockwork had taught me, channeling energy into the wound, feeling it splash near-futilely against the flood of pain. Was it because I was so exhausted? Or was it because the poison – or whatever it was – was getting worse?

While trying to focus, to heal, to figure it out, I was dimly aware of Jazz procuring some Fenton Ghost Medical equipment and placing it over me. But then it was all too much – the waves of shredding heat in my stomach, the stress, the sheer drain – and I finally passed out, healing energy still coursing in and out of my stomach.

* * *

As always, thanks to everyone for reading (and reviewing, those reviews keep me motivated to make more! Even if it's just something as simple as "love it, mo4r plz". ^^) Hope I am managing to keep your interest, as I haven't written anything in this style for a very long time. See you next time!

-R


	6. Venomous Words

Chapter 6

I dreamed again.

At least, I thought I was dreaming; the rapidly changing environment, the symbols, the way that meaning seemed to appear without any actions to create it; it was vague, confusing, difficult to grasp. I had some experience with recognizing these situations as dreams, and then taking control. Lucid dreaming. I thought this was just another example; so, recognizing that I must be dreaming, I tried to give form to the swirling chaos around me and take a look at what was happening.

But I couldn't. Being in a dream-state I wasn't exactly rational, and so I couldn't be bothered to figure out why this might be; instead I just kept trying. I focused on the spot right in front of me and tried to make someone appear, anyone who I could talk to, really. And someone did appear; but as I quickly realized, it was not because I had willed it.

"Manson."

The voice had an implacable quality, like an insect crawling into your ears. The body was covered in a heavy cloak of night; dotted with stars, and clouds tracing the eddies and ripples of force that coursed along its surface. I couldn't see the head; though I could barely tell that some length of hair eventually came out of it, the eyes were so prominent that nothing else could register.

Deep, dark, far-seeing eyes. I felt beyond transparent; he couldn't just see through me, he could see every part of me from every angle, inside and out, simultaneously. But I couldn't see anything about him, just the night sky and those eyes, whose shape or color I still couldn't make out clearly. I wondered if that was some kind of magic in and of itself, designed to psych out his opponents. I didn't doubt it, and I didn't want to linger on the idea.

"Who are you?" I asked, trying to force myself to look into those eyes and see them for what they really were.

"I am the new God of Earth."

The air of chaos around us cracked open, and reality gave a _lurch_. Suddenly we were floating above Earth, watching armies rally. I waited. I didn't sense anything from him; no enjoyment, at least. But there was something subtle, something urgent, that he was keeping well hidden. I had to find out more.

"I mean, what's your name?"

He kept that horrible stare on the scenes playing out below us, flying by at tremendous speed, all iron and smoke. But he answered, "Iridian."

Why was he in my dream? Why was he showing me war? I wanted to ask these questions but I felt them die in my throat. Almost like I wasn't allowed to ask them. He was guiding me towards specific questions, then. I tried to figure out what was behind the dark cloud of knowledge in his eyes again, but it was no use.

"What's going on?" I was finally able to ask.

"I am tapping you, Manson. I want you to serve me."

Surprisingly, the chilling aura of that statement did not actually chill me; something about this dream-state removed me from those feelings. Or maybe I had finally gone so crazy from fear and stress that I couldn't even process it. Either way, I could only have a loosely rational hold on the impact of his words, and even that was muted by the still-grating quality they had in my ears.

"Serve you. Then why send Ember to kill me?" I asked.

No answer. The armies flashing below and around us were mobilizing now, and the first outrider skirmishes were taking place. A thought flashed in my mind. "Is this…happening right now?"

"Yes."

A single word, imbued with terrible meaning: _Yes, because I willed it, because the world must be leveled before I can rule it anew_.

"Why would I help you?" I said, feeling my grip on the warped reality of the situation start to fade.

"You are weak right now….we will speak more of this later. Find me in Aragon's Lair."

His words were no longer buzzing; instead, they flooded over my body with the rustling feeling of flapping wings. There was nothing but the words, the meaning, the feeling, the location, and the dizzying spiral of impossible force that sent me careening out of sleep. I gasped for air as I awoke, and immediately regretted it as the splitting pain in my stomach surged back to life. Still too weak from exhaustion to even grip at the source of pain, I simply cringed and lied still.

"Sam! You're awake."

The voice was strong, concerned, and had that hint of something extra, that faint echo that meant it was more than human.

"Danny," I said, a smile coming across my face, even though my eyes were closed against the pain. I felt him take one of my hands in his, that otherworldly chill familiar and comforting.

"I was so worried about you," he said, the ghostly echo concealing a slight tremor of emotion. "I'm so glad you're alright."

"Likewise." I opened my eyes and saw that intense green-eyed stare, hovering over me, and a cavern of ice beyond us. "Are we in Frostbite's realm?"

"Yeah. He's keeping us safe while we make plans."

"Plans? What for?" I asked, trying to sit up and look around, and immediately realizing that was unwise. Danny was sitting next to me, but for the first time since I'd come to, he looked away.

"Things are bad, Sam. You've been unconscious for a few hours and…well, the situation's pretty serious."

"The war," I said, closing my eyes. The echoes of the dream, or vision, or whatever it had been, were still playing on the backs of my eyelids. "It's started."

"Yeah," he said. "I heard about your talk with Clockwork, and everything he said was true. There haven't been any nukes yet, but every major power on the planet has started fighting. We think the world leaders have all been overshadowed."

I shuddered, reliving all the images that I'd seen, in Clockwork's portals, and in my dream-vision. "Even if someone can put a stop to it with government, it won't be before tons of people are killed."

Danny sat there, agreeing silently. His helplessness in this situation was killing him, and I could feel it too. Before I could think of anything else to say, I felt him touch my cheek. I opened my eyes and looked back at him, recognizing the hard-set look: he was ready to do something he didn't want to do.

"Sam…I'll help you do it. I'll help you kill the ghosts making this happen."

"Danny…" I looked for words, but was still coming up short. I reached up to put my own hand on his cheek, and it brushed past something hard and bright; an emerald, dangling from a chain around his neck. It had found him, after all. So he really did know everything. Even that I was basically marked for death by Clockwork once this was all over. He knew that helping me learn how to kill a ghost was the same as sending me to my own doom. And he knew, just like I did, that neither of us had a choice.

As recognition passed between us unspoken, I could feel both of us fighting not to let any tears emerge. We couldn't let that slow us down.

I touched his cheek at last, took a deep breath, and succeeded in sitting up.

"We've got a lot of work to do," I said. "Where's Frostbite? I need to see if he has any advice on how to do this."

"He's in the war room," Danny said, a sobering mixture of fear and disgust in his tone. "They've been discussing strategy on how to locate the enemy commander and take him out. After all, if he destroys the human world with this war, the Ghost Zone will disappear, too. It's in everyone's interest to stop this."

I nodded, slowly, trying to channel energy into my wound again. It wasn't much more effective than it had been right before I passed out. "I see. We should probably go there, then. I have some new information for them."

Danny raised an eyebrow, as if unsure how I could have more information, but I sent him a knowing look and he just smiled and shrugged. Between the emerald around his neck, the violet in my hair, and everything else that was happening, he didn't really have any choice but to take my word for it.

"We were able to give some treatment to the ghostly aspects of your injury," he said as we walked towards the war room through ice-rimmed tunnels. "It's a powerful venom that attacks your ecto-pulse. I don't really understand what that means, but I know that we'll have to figure out something stronger in the long run. We were only able to slow it down. Frostbite says he might know how to make an antidote, but he didn't want to talk about it until you woke up. That's the first thing we're going to talk to him about."

I gave a nod. Much as I wanted to storm right off to face this Iridian and put an end to things, I knew it wouldn't work if he had some kind of poison laying dormant in my system.

"Danny." I stopped and looked at him, trying to stay strong. "Why did you run off after Skulker shot me?"

He looked back, a strange fire in his eyes. "I wasn't going to wait for them to try again. Just like we planned, I was going to talk to Frostbite, and find out what the hell is going on. I…I'm sorry I left you."

I shook my head. "No, it's alright. We had to move forward. Just…."

"What is it?"

I wanted to beg him not to leave my side again, and tried not to burn red in embarrassment for thinking something so weak. But damn it, I was scared, and I loved the boy. And he was one of the most powerful individuals in the world. He had already pledged to help me do what I had to do, but I couldn't shake the terrible feeling I was going to lose him again. Especially not since Clockwork's cryptic hint about how I'd have to defeat Danny refused to leave my mind as I looked at him.

"Be careful," I finally said. "You're their main target, after all."

"I know," he said, giving a cocky eye-roll. "Johnny 13 came after me right after I got here, and his Shadow was the size of a space-ship. He almost had me worried, right up until Kitty showed up and hauled him off by the ear. Apparently not even a ghost-controlling magician can compete when _she's_ your girlfriend."

"Well, 'Hell hath no fury,'" I said. "Remember that, Ghost Boy."

"Don't worry, Sam. I won't leave your side again."

He said it quietly, with an intensity I had almost forgotten he was capable of. I gave a soft "thanks" in reply, and then we were in the War Room.

The situation _was_ bad. It was already determined that there were several major priorities: removing the ghosts overshadowing the world leaders, intercepting any of Iridian's generals, and, of course, destroying Iridian himself. Jazz and Tucker were prepared to lead a team back on Earth to take care of the first issue, since the Fenton Exorciser – a backpack-powered anti-overshadowing gun that Danny's father had insistedon equipping with a "vibrate away the fat" belt - had recently been perfected.

"But the remaining two tasks will require the specific talents of Daniel and Sam," Frostbite announced. "As Clockwork himself has clearly stipulated, Sam's magic will be essential in countering the magic of this Iridian fellow. And as the reports from Sam's encounter with Ember suggest, if Iridian is present, a defeated ghost can be brought to even more power than they once had, ready to fight anew. Though it pains me greatly to say it, I fear that victory will depend on Sam's ability to utterly destroy some of our foes."

There was silence, even though it was obvious that Jazz wanted to argue. Everyone did, really, but there just wasn't time for it anymore. She, and everyone else, stayed quiet.

"This is something of a problem, however, as Sam is currently befouled with a ghostly poison of Iridian's craft. Before she can make any attempt on Iridian's forces, she will need to be cured. Unfortunately, my knowledge of ghostly venom is extremely limited. I do know two things for certain, however: the first, is that if an antidote is to be found, it will be through some form of alchemy performed on the source venom; the second, the expertise of another soul will be required to perform that alchemy."

Frostbite paused after his pronouncement to let the gravity of it sink in, and silently invite any observations that might be useful. I heaved a sigh, fighting down the shakes of fear – and pain, from the throbbing wound - welling inside.

"I think I know where the venom comes from," I said. "And I know where to find it. I think Iridian doesn't want me cured, except maybe if he does it himself, so he'll probably be watching it. And he told me to come find him in Aragon's Lair. The Manson Family Estate says that this poison is the poison of a ghost dragon, and Iridian is sitting right on top of the source."

"Out of the question!" Jazz shouted. "The whole reason we're trying to find you an antidote is so you'll be _capable_ of fighting Iridian and the ghosts he's controlling. It won't do any good trying to find the antidote if you get killed the second you get there!"

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but Jazz is right," Tucker added. "You two may both have freaky powers now, but you aren't ninjas, and Iridian has _got_ to be expecting you to try sneaking in there somehow."

"He basically ordered me to," I commented wryly.

"Then another tactic must be devised," Frostbite said. "We _must_ acquire the source venom if we are to cure Sam and win the day. It is imperative."

"He's right," Danny said, assuming that voice of command that winning so many battles had instilled in him. "But even if we do come up with something, and we can get the venom, how are we going to use it? Does anyone here know the alchemy of ghost poison?"

There was another aching silence. The wound in my stomach pulsed, as much a psychic phenomenon as a physical one, and I fought down a wave of nausea.

"I know of only two ghostly figures adept in the knowledge of such things," Frostbite finally offered. "The first is Spectra. Unfortunately, however, our scouts have suggested that she is probably working with Iridian, and may even be one of the primary movers behind the wars taking place on Earth right now. The second….you will not like."

"Oh _please_, Frostbite, enough with the dramatics. You might as well reveal our little secret," said a voice from inside the ceiling. I looked in its direction, suppressing the shock I felt, especially since I hadn't sensed a thing in the ecto-fields. The voice was familiar, irritatingly hypocritical in its own drama, and had articulation so insistently precise that it could really only be qualified as "untrustworthy." Recognition dawned, and I felt my heart drop like that damned Disasteroid the voice had caused, straight through my stomach and into my feet.

"No way," I murmured, and Danny caught on a second later.

"NO."

Then, sure as the ice in the cavern, he materialized out of the ceiling. His arrogant smirk was replaced with something hard to describe, because even though it looked like repentance, it couldn't possibly be. But everything else was the same: white, black and red clothing designed like a 1980's supervillain, glowing red eyes, and stupidly exaggerated canines.

The ghostly alter ego of ex-mayor Vlad Masters – Plasmius.

"Hello, Daniel."

"NO!" Danny shouted again, instinctively firing off an ecto blast. Plasmius deflected it with ease, but with an odd attention to avoiding hitting anyone else with it in the process. The tension between them was palpable as Danny clutched his smoking fist, teeth grinding. I wished I didn't feel so weak from the poison, wished I could do something, but for the time being all I could do was watch.

"_This_ is unacceptable," Danny finally said. "How are you even still around? And Frostbite – what is he doing here? Have you been giving this lunatic a hide out? After _everything_ he's done! How do we know he isn't working for Iridian?"

"If that were the case, we would all be doomed already," Frostbite said. His bass voice sounded oddly like funeral bells at the moment.

"Then what the hell _is_ he doing here?" Danny shouted.

"Please, Daniel, allow me to explain!" Plasmius said with the characteristic syrup of his voice. "I'm a changed man!"

"I've heard that one before, Plasmius," Danny said. "You better have something more convincing up your sleeve."

"Look," he said, floating down to stand by Frostbite's side and opening his arms towards us in a plaintive gesture. "I could waste valuable minutes regaling you with my incredibly interesting story of redemption in the wilderness of space – and believe me, it is a treasure of a story – or I could point out the simple fact that the end of the Earth is not exactly what I want. Even if I were still a madman bent on conquest, Iridian's rise to power would be something of a roadblock, now wouldn't it? I have just as much reason to want to stop him as you do. And it's as clear to me as anyone that we need Sam healthy to do so. The only difference between me and anyone in this room is that I alone have the knowledge and the resources to make that happen. So Daniel, are you really going to let your hatred of me stand in the way of your little girlfriend's life, not to mention, oh yes, the _entire world_?"

They stared each other down again, and I have to own, there was something akin to genuine remorse in those burning circles that passed for Plasmius' eyes; as close to it as they could get, I supposed. I didn't want to believe it anymore than Danny did, but if there was one thing Plasmius always had been a master of, it was winning an argument. Danny looked at me for some kind of confirmation, and all I could do was sigh and nod. He scoffed, but nodded back.

"Fine, Plasmius. We'll hear you out. But just remember-"

"Yes, yes, yes, 'you'll be watching me' and all the other usual banter," Plasmius interrupted, sighing heavily. "Don't you think we're beyond the one-liners now, Daniel? This is serious."

The ice practically started to melt from the heat of frustration that particular remark drew, and not just from Danny, but from all of us. Changed man or not, he was just as self-serving as ever, and his own attitude was far from serious. But we all bit our tongues and waited.

"Thank you. Now, as for my plan….Sam Manson, you are going to have to die."

* * *

BUM BUM BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM. So sorry for the long wait, everyone! Things have been very hectic around the house while we organize moving and jobs for everyone now that the school year is ending! But I hope you will stick with us as this crazy adventure really starts to get underway. As I'm sure you can tell there are lots of big things in the works. Tell your friends! Review! Love!

Sincerely and with thanks as always,

R


	7. The Death of Sam Manson

Chapter 7

Plasmius was a lot of things; he was a megalomaniac, a complete hypocrite, a liar, and in all likelihood already plotting some evil way of turning this situation in favor of his schemes for world domination; but he was not stupid. Thus, my utter shock at hearing him suggest that the solution to our problems, which in the long run required me to be alive, was my own death.

And my quick realization that he was making another dramatic joke, or pun, or _something_.

"…right?"

I hadn't realized I'd spoken out loud, and to everyone else it seemed I'd just agreed with him. I blushed and sighed angrily, trying not to be too obvious about having to grip my stomach in the pain that followed.

"Sam?" Danny asked, all concern.

"Just hear him out," I said.

"Thank you, Samantha," he replied. I growled "it's Sam" under my breath as he continued. "What I mean is this: Iridian is waiting for…_Sam_ to come to his command post in Aragon's Castle, probably to try to get her to join forces with him, or something equally cliché. But if Sam were to appear dead, then he would no longer need to sit on that post, especially not if his attention were required elsewhere. He'll probably leave someone to guard it, but one of his generals should be manageable for, let's say, Daniel."

"You don't want to join in on the fight?" Danny asked dryly.

"Oh please, who do you think will be causing the distraction that allows you to sneak by in the first place? We couldn't leave an operation that delicate in the hands of an amateur like yourself," he retorted.

"I don't like this," I said, my voice sounding oddly clear all of the sudden. "Plasmius, don't we need you to make it out of this in order to actually put the venom we get to good use? The life expectancy of a decoy isn't normally very good."

"That's why I'll be using a doppelganger as a decoy, Sam," he said; the word "patronizing" was insufficient. "My real form will stay safely here. My doppelganger, with perhaps some modest support from Frostbite's troops, will make an assault on one of Iridian's outposts. He'll be forced to attend to the matter privately, leaving Aragon's realm open for the plundering."

His tone was wistful, like he wished he were the one in a position to plunder; but he hadn't even suggested it. Maybe he _had_ changed? Or maybe the pain was finally getting to me.

"That all sounds good in theory, but how are we supposed to convince Iridian that Sam is dead?" Danny asked.

"And keep in mind that as a magician he can sense my ecto-pulse, just like I can sense all of…yours…except…"

My voice trailed off as I looked at Plasmius and realized I _still_ couldn't sense him the way I could everyone else. He smirked, loving it.

"Except mine? And why do you suppose that is? It's not because I'm weak, I can guarantee you that much. It's because I've perfected a technique for concealing one's ecto-pulse from the prying eyes of all forms of detection. As you may remember, I've pioneered quite a few techniques during our rivalry."

"Enough patting yourself on the back!" Danny said, slamming a fist on the table which we all sat around. "So you can hide Sam's ecto-pulse. Do you think that'll be enough to fool him?"

"Absolutely not," Plasmius said, still smirking. "But when a copy of Sam shows up, acting just like her, with the same ecto-pulse, and gets destroyed in his presence, that just might do the trick. And before you even ask, yes, Daniel, we can make that happen. All Sam has to do is create a copy of herself, just like you or I would when we make a doppelganger, and send it off."

"But won't that mean that I'll be sending a part of my personality out with it?" I asked, while trying to wrap my mind around the concept of creating a doppelganger, while the violet in my hair gave off a quiet warmth in response.

"Of course," Plasmius said, that smirk leaving now and a bizarre sadness overcoming his red eyes. "I told you that you were going to have to die. A doppelganger that is defeated in battle may just return to the original host, but Iridian isn't likely to leave it at that. You can expect your doppelganger to be thoroughly tested and, ultimately, killed."

While the rest of the room drew shocked breaths at the realization that he had been _serious_, I just tried not to pass out from the prospect.

"Seems like a lot of trouble for an antidote," I said, voice thin.

"We can't let Iridian kill a part of Sam," Danny said, and a bit of relief washed over me. "Plasmius, what if you 'defeat' Sam's doppelganger in front of him? Make it _look_ like you…killed her. Then make a run for it. He'll chase after you for taking away his potential ally. Two birds, one stone, no actual death."

If I hadn't felt so sick I could've kissed the Ghost Boy right then and there. Instead, I tried to smile at him. It was hard, but I managed.

Plasmius nodded slowly. "Yes, I suppose that could work. It will have to be a very convincing illusion, however. Sam is still human, after all, and killing humans convincingly is a somewhat…gory affair, especially if one is to leave no trace behind. You'll have to use your magic to make it seem as though I've done some really horrible things to you before I blast the whole thing away."

"Illusions I can handle," I said, putting a hand on the table to steady myself, my head swimming. "Dying, not so much. Not if I can avoid it."

"Hm." It was an understanding, but disapproving sound. Disappointed, even. "Sam Manson, you do realize that you're being asked to _kill_ other beings on this quest? Yet you aren't prepared to die yourself? Doesn't that strike you as a bit problematic?"

"Shut up, Plasmius," Danny said. "It's like you said, we don't have time for the drama."

"Actually," Frostbite said, "Plasmius raises an important point. The will to destroy another being is a terrible one indeed, and fear of death could seriously hamper the ability to go through with such a thing. Sam, to control death, you must be prepared to face it yourself."

I opened my mouth in the hopes that something wise and significant would come out, but there was only a slight cry of pain from the wound in my stomach.

"Nevertheless, Danny is also correct in that we do not have enough time to consider this," Frostbite said, standing and assuming a general's tone. "Even as we speak, war is starting to rage on Earth, and it spells imminent disaster for humans, ghosts, and all beings who exist in our two worlds. We must act swiftly and decisively to avoid it. The assignments are currently as follows: Jazz and Tucker will take a detachment to Earth to counter the overshadowing of the world leaders. Another detachment will try to contact Walker, who has yet to take an official stance on the ensuing conflict. My personal guard and I will remain here, to protect the resources we've amassed – the Infi-map, and Plasmius' laboratory facilities, primarily. Plasmius, you will take the remaining detachment, along with Sam and Danny, to execute your plan for retrieving the venom. Is everyone clear?"

Everyone was.

"Then, everyone to your stations, and may the forces of good prevail."

I had time to say goodbye to Jazz and Tucker, but it was hurried. Before anything else could happen, Plasmius had to teach me to hide my ecto-pulse – fairly easy, actually, with the help of my violet – and how to produce a doppelganger. That proved to be a bit more challenging, especially as the pain in my gut kept bringing my focus back into my own body.

But with Danny's help, I was able to get it in just under an hour. The light of the emerald around his neck, shining with the same energy of his ghostly eyes, was calming, an anchor. I could lose myself in it, and the soul Clockwork claimed it represented, and leave my body behind; from the tether of that emerald and through the beacon of the violet, my will could force the swirling ectoplasm around us into a copy of myself. I stepped out of my body and into the copy.

I opened my eyes and saw myself, staring back at me; I saw both perspectives at the same time - like standing between two mirrors only a thousand times worse - and almost lost it. One of us looked away, stabilizing the image. With my original eyes I saw the back of my own head, and with those new eyes I saw the approving glances of Plasmius and Danny. Seeing the two of them in agreement over something was almost the freakiest part of the whole process.

Then, I was sharply aware of the fact that I was watching myself watch them watch me, and it almost became too much to bear. Maybe if I'd been at full strength I would have been alright, but after all, we were going through this whole song and dance precisely because I was so weak right now. I did the only thing I could think of: in my original body, I closed my eyes and sat down.

I tried to leave that body behind. Tried to keep the image of Danny's emerald as the anchor of my consciousness, as it was through that light I'd been able to make this new one. It helped; it especially helped because the violet in my hair now was not the same as the violet in my original body. It was only a copy and had none of the mysterious powers that Clockwork had given the original. The emerald light I carried inside me now was the only additional source of power I had.

That, and the network of sigils my original body patiently drew in the air, over and over again.

"This split awareness…it's hard. It hurts," I noticed.

"It takes getting used to. It's definitely not something I'd recommend for someone with a poisoned hole in their stomach," Danny offered.

"I find it rather pleasant, honestly," Plasmius offered. "But, to each their own. Now, Sam, do you understand your part in this?"

In my new body, I nodded. "Yes. I'll appear to be accepting Iridian's offer. When he comes to meet me, you will intercept us and attack me. I'll be crafting illusions of this body being broken apart by you until you make it vanish completely." I spoke with the trance-like quality of my mental state; I was a pure observer, pure fact, awash in green light. Anything else would send my mind right back to my true body.

"Good. And be sure not to skimp on the gore. Iridian may be an evil genius like I once was, but he's still a human and there must undoubtedly be some trace of humanity left in him that will respond to such a display. The more convincing your illusion, the more likely this will work."

I nodded. Already, moving the new body was feeling more natural than the other one.

"And I'll take her real body with me, and we'll sneak in after you create the diversion," Danny said. I couldn't tell where we was staring, as I couldn't tell much of anything; but his tone of voice was fierce. He didn't like this. I guessed I didn't like it either, but I was detached from that. I was detached from everything.

"Then it's time to go," Plasmius announced.

The interim was a blur. I was too serene. I gathered loosely that Plasmius and Danny exchanged some conversation, most of it about how Plasmius had returned from outer space. They were notably cooperative. And suddenly, we were there; floating outside that castle which was the realm of the Dragon Prince Aragon. True, it had undergone some changes since I'd brought feminism 101 to the princesses of the land, but by and large it had remained Prince Aragon's. I had kept tabs on it over the past few years; there had been wars over the matter, all pretty much unresolved. It was difficult to decide a contest like that when none of the competitors could be killed, as per usual feudal politics.

What was different now was not what Dragon Ghost owned it, but who owned the Dragon Ghost. If, I reflected distantly, said ghost was even still in existence.

Plasmius – or rather, his doppelganger, since Plasmius himself remained safely back in Frostbite's realm – turned to me and spoke in a low, urgent tone.

"Alright, Sam. Enter the castle and find Iridian. Once you do, confirm the source of the venom, or all of this will be for nothing. After you've done that, flare your ecto-pulse. That's the signal. I'll sense it, and I will come in to provide the cover for your 'death.' I'll be right behind you. Danny, take Sam's original body and hide until this part is over."

"Yeah, right," Danny acknowledged, still sounding unhappy, though less combative than before. I simply nodded, and focused on the castle gates. The emerald light buffeting my consciousness was like a field of energy around my doppelganger body, and I effortlessly floated downward, feelings of dread passing over me and through me, gone as quickly as they appeared. I was pure thought; I was free. My feelings were clouds on a conveyor belt…a curious and senseless anomaly to be observed at leisure, or not at all.

It was nice to be free of anxiety for a while; not good, persay, because such feelings were beyond me for the moment; but it wasn't unpleasant, either. It allowed me to focus on my surroundings.

The castle was opulent, enough even to put Manson sensibility to shame, but no one was around; I was vaguely aware of that sense of dread again, steady and insistent, but far, far away. Too far to be concerned with. I floated through the halls, observing paintings, statuary, and all forms of decorations, but no people. No soldiers, no servants, no courtiers. It was odd.

I finally arrived at the throne room.

Two ghost dragons – a brother and a sister – were chained by inexorable magic bindings, their wings crushed against their bodies, their limbs splayed on the floor. Their snouts were muzzled with crackling energy, and between them, on the throne, was Iridian.

He was unmistakable: that cloak of swirling night clouds and stars, the black hair falling like daggers to his neck, a gigantic fan spread out like a scallop shell behind him, and the eyes…

No, they were different. Familiar, somehow, but different. They were not the impenetrable abyss of our previous encounters: they were human. Impossibly human, filled with the possibility for every human emotion, and at the moment, strange though it seemed, they seemed to register…joy. Like a child with a new toy.

A distant part of me shuddered. I noticed.

"Manson," he said, the word issuing out like incense, slow and almost visible, with a heady quality. "I trust you are seeking the antidote."

"I trust you have it," I replied automatically. "Chained to your floors, apparently."

"The Dragon Ghosts?" he asked, almost as if he'd forgotten, looking with nostalgia at his prisoners. "Yes, yes, they were the source of the venom, of course. But only I have the antidote. Serve me, Sam, and it can be yours."

I had confirmed the source of the venom. Now it was time to 'die.' I flared my ecto-pulse and started planning gory spatters of my "blood" in response to Plasmius' attack.

"What do you say?" he asked, drawing closer to me. The cloying feel of his words grew stronger and I could feel their insect-like buzz in my ears again. "I could teach you things Clockwork fears to even speak of."

I said nothing, and flared my ecto-pulse, hard. I could not sense Plasmius anywhere.

A flash of panic appeared on my face.

"You're not expecting someone, are you?" Iridian said, drawing closer still. I stood on the floor to save energy, and he was now just a few arms' lengths away, and the words advanced in force again, resuming that wing-like quality of rush and sound. "I would hate to have our conversation interrupted."

Did Iridian already know about the plan? Had he sent someone to intercept Plasmius? I tried to sense his presence, but it was as absent as ever. If someone were trying to fight him, he would not be able to hide it, I knew. No one had found him.

He wasn't coming.

For a few brief moments I was able to stay rational and analyze the facts: in all likelihood, he had betrayed me to this fate because he knew it would be more believable and far less risky to him, and maybe even to the plan over all. Without emotion to consider, it really was the more sensible approach. Yes, it required me to die, but what was my death do the success of the mission to save everyone I loved? There would be time to be angry at Plasmius for this treachery later; for now there was the task at hand.

Oh yes, the task at hand. To die.

The feeling of doom was not far away at all, anymore.

The green light was fading.

"No…no, I don't want to die," I started mumbling.

"What's that?" Iridian asked. He was close enough to touch me and his presence sang like wet crystal. "You want to live? Then let me help you."

He didn't want to help me, he wanted to control me; I could feel it. His words were trying to worm their way inside me, to take me over without me even realizing. I couldn't fight it. I had only one choice: fight him.

I tried to form a bolt of energy in my fist, and my arm went limp. Not from anything he was obviously doing to me; just sheer terror. His eyes, this close, in person, remained disconcertingly human, filled with that implacable joy. Beside myself, I started to cry.

"Please don't kill me," I murmured, hating myself for saying it. I had come here to die, after all, hadn't I? _No_, my emotions reminded me, _I came here to _pretend_ to die. But now there's no choice and it's NOT FAIR._

A seed of rage sprouted deep within. His expression did not change; he just watched, endlessly amused. But I was building something powerful now. Why not – his guard was down and I was in striking distance. Kill or be killed, right? I let the rage wash over me and accepted that if a human's death was inevitable, it had damn well better be his.

But just before that rage could coalesce into anything useful – even a battle cry - I felt something impossibly quick, sharp, and strong shoot through my forehead. Almost as suddenly, I felt the sensation again over almost every part of my body. I was disintegrating, every single part of me, all at once. The pain was beyond imagining, but I was paralyzed by the power of Iridian's spell. All I could do was watch those all-too-human eyes, smiling with joy at my suffering. I could hear his voice inside my mind, incense-insect-wing-crystal and more all at once.

_No spirit shall live that does not bend to my will_.

And my mind was ripped apart.

I didn't gasp, didn't shout, didn't make any noise or motion whatsoever when I awoke again in my original body, in Danny's arms, outside Aragon's castle. I couldn't; the pain was still too fresh.

I had died.

How can I describe the experience of dying, and in such a cruel manner? Another task for the goth poetry book, I suppose, but suffice to say that it was worse than I'd imagined. Reality did not make sense. Pain barely even made sense; hadn't I already suffered enough? I had _died_. Slowly, oh-so-slowly, the emerald light of Danny's pendant and the warmth of the violet in my hair brought my reason back. The subtle quakes that wracked my body began to subside. And as I began to understand the gravity of what had happened to me, I suddenly wished that I was still in the panicked moment of revival. Even that was less painful than the full understanding which was now looming on the horizon of my mind.

Quickly, and because I had no choice whatsoever, I shut it out.

I was very quiet.

"Sam, what happened?" Danny finally asked.

I found it hard to speak, but forced myself to, choosing my words extremely carefully. "It worked," I finally said. "I…died."

The way I said it seemed to tip Danny off to the fact that things did not go as planned. But as he drew breath to ask me more about it, we both felt reality _lurch_, and a fan-shaped missile burst out of the castle, flying away from us.

"I guess that must be Iridian, going for the distraction," Danny said.

I nodded quietly. "Yeah. So we should go in, then. While we can. I doubt Plasmius can deal with him for very long."

I must have sounded almost as bad as I felt, because I could see the pain reflected in Danny's eyes. I knew he wanted to be my friend, my companion, and this new brand of helplessness was hurting him all over again.

Hurting, but not killing. No, I don't think I could ever say that something was killing him again. That figure of speech was officially off-limits for the rest of eternity.

We both steeled ourselves up, though, and with Danny powering our speed and intangibility, drove headlong into the heart of the castle.

* * *

Hey, how about that – a double post! Since I've been so bad and kept you waiting for so long. As always, thanks for your support, everyone. Can't wait to keep this going!

Sincerely,

R


	8. Cost of Repairs

Chapter 8

My senses were returning, and between the power of the violet and the emerald I was feeling alert and strong, although having the physical wound in my body didn't help. Still, though mental disaster of unimaginable proportions was clearly churning under the surface, I was weirdly calm and focused. I was scanning the ecto-pulses and felt my own thrumming with power. The castle was spooky and seemingly abandoned, but I felt involved and in control. I even felt powerful.

Really, given what had just happened, I felt too powerful. But I wrote that off and focused. There had to be some kind of trap waiting, just in case.

"Do you hear something?" Danny asked, stopping in mid-air.

"Yeah," I said, closing my eyes and trying to sense what it was. It was too distant to make out clearly, but it seemed to be getting louder. "We should keep moving, though."

We did. But as we approached the vaulted door leading into the throne room, the crescendo exploded around us in churning, metallic chords and pyrotechnics. Danny and I both threw up shields, and swirling blades crashed into them from all around. As the smoke cleared, I used my own intangibility and slipped into the floor, but I already knew who would be standing there.

Ember.

"Where's your girlfriend?" she asked, her voice cold.

"Dead," Danny replied. "And you're next."

"Oh my, the Ghost Boy is after revenge? Well that suits me fine. Now that she's gone, nothing can stop me from being an immortal star! And what better way to headline my launch tour than by destroying Danny Phantom?"

She didn't wait for an answer; I heard the screaming engines of her fire-hair rev and could practically feel the heat through the stone floor as she launched at Danny, fast, impossibly fast; but, he was ready for that. He dodged her, and bolted. She took the bait.

I waited until I was sure they were gone, returned to the surface, and entered the throne room.

The Dragons were still trapped there, looking truly miserable. I couldn't feel too bad for Aragon, but his sister didn't deserve this. I could only hope that hers was the venom in question, as I didn't like the idea of anything from the brother being in my system. Slowly, I approached them, thinking over the various ways one might milk the venom from a muzzled dragon's fang. But before I even made it half way there, there was an explosion of green light in the middle of the room, stopping me in my tracks.

And as the light settled, another figure emerged. Tall, muscular, green-skinned, and with eyes that would have been familiar if the irises hadn't swirled over in red. Like an echo across time and space, Clockwork's words echoed in my mind again:

"To protect him, you must defeat….him."

The pedestal with Danny's name on it. The absent space on top; Clockwork's mysterious reference to Iridian having taken away something Clockwork was responsible for. I could have slapped myself for being so stupid as to not have figured this out sooner, but my attention could not be spared for such things: Danny Phantom's alternate form, the one that grew up evil, was standing before me, with a lip curled in cold distaste around a snaking, forked tongue.

"Hello, Sam," he said, cape flared behind him. "I can't say I'm happy to see you. But anything's better than that ridiculous thermos I've been trapped in for the past few years. Wouldn't you agree?"

"I'd say it suited you," I said, trying to stand firm. "I guess Iridian let you out, then. So you're working for him?"

He laughed, that forked tongue wriggling as the white fire of his hair burned higher. "Don't be ridiculous. I wouldn't serve someone just because they freed me from a piece of kitchenware. I'm not a Genie…although I am next to all-powerful. Which is why Iridian freed me in the first place – so he could observe my power, and learn from it. If it weren't for you, Sam, I'd be on Earth right now, running amok and absolutely loving it….but you are here. Alive. And I don't like that."

At my side, my fingers started tracing sigils all on their own. While power swirled around me, I tried to stay focused on the evil Danny, and figure out how to beat him. I already knew that the Ghostly Wail made my shield next to useless, so I would have to go on the offensive. But how?

Too late; he cast a green glow over me and I was paralyzed.

Well, mostly paralyzed; I found that my sigil-fingers were still mobile. But a soft insistence from the violent in my hair told me that I should keep that fact hidden. I did, and waited as "Dark Danny" paced towards me, a free hand swirling open a portal to another part of the Ghost Zone.

"Sam, you are in so far over your head right now, it's almost disgusting that you even think you have a chance," he said, holding that portal in front of me. On the other side was Iridian and Plasmius…and Plasmius was held paralyzed, just like I was. "Iridian knew your plan all along. In fact, he was counting on it. He wanted to kill a part of you, because it would open you up to your true power. That, and seeing it from the other side, of course."

I stared wide-eyed at just that: Iridian held Plasmius in an invisible and unstoppable grip, and bit by bit, the Doppelganger was being peeled away, just like he had done to me earlier. To my own horror, I found that turnabout incredibly satisfying, much more than it should have been, and I tried to force that feeling out of my awareness. Feelings aside, I did sense something else in my mind start to shift as I watched that: the experience of death from both vantage points was mixing somewhere deep in my brain, and causing a tremor. It felt…tectonic. Too big to grasp for the moment, but there would be quakes later.

But most importantly, as I watched Plasmius being ripped to shreds, and hoping despite myself that his real form was actually safe, I sensed a chink in Iridian's mental armor. His concentration on Plasmius' being dismantled was absolute…he must be aware that I was watching, but he wasn't ready to defend against an attack. And all that stood between him and myself was a ghost-portal – in essence, nothing.

I could end it all right here and now if I moved swiftly enough, but with my wound aching and only my sigil-fingers available, I kind of doubted that swiftness was available. Besides, there was still the problem of Dark Danny, and what _he_ could do now that he was unleashed on the world. Even in those moments, I did not miss the significance of the fact that it was Dark Danny that Clockwork had expressly advised me to defeat, not Iridian; thus the insistence that I learn how to kill a ghost. Even if I could take out Iridian, I doubted I would survive Dark Danny's counter.

But I also knew I couldn't miss this chance to do something.

With a careful dance of my fingers, sigils flaring to life at my side, my mind felt the rushing currents of every active spell that Iridian was maintaining; I could practically see the lines of force rippling out from him, like marionette strings. Just like Dark Danny had claimed, there were none in his direction whatsoever. But there were strings leading back into this castle. I felt Iridian's focus start to waver from the rapidly vanishing Plasmius, start to turn back toward me, slow as a giant but every bit as menacing. I had to work quickly.

I formed a mental blade and cut through the lines leading into the castle.

I felt the faintest trace of confusion from Iridian before the portal snapped shut as Dark Danny blasted me with that signature green palm, what was normally a relief to see, now corrupted. His green glow held tight on me, my sigil fingers were doubly stiffened, and I went flying, skidding across the floor, and landing against the doorframe. Pain exploded in my mind, although after what I'd been through earlier, it wasn't really that bad; but it was still bad enough to make my scream out in pain.

"I have to admit I like your gumption, Sam," he said. "I suppose I can see why Iridian wants you to work for him after all. You really might be able to kill a ghost, just like he can. And because he can, I have no desire to try to cross him myself. Otherwise, you would already be dead." He came closer, and went down to one knee to look me in the eyes, a twisted smile curling around his pointed teeth, the red glowing in his eyes. "But that isn't going to stop me from beating you to a bloody pulp before I present you to him."

I grinned against the pain, against the growing fear, and forced my jaw to move against the green paralysis. "I don't think I'm the one you should be worried about, snake-face."

Dark Danny was smart enough to act without looking; he already had a shield up while he turned around, which was all that kept the now-freed Prince Aragon's dragon teeth from sinking into his ghostly form. I don't think that would have come close to killing him, but it would have hurt quite a bit.

But he did put a shield up, and so he stood there, holding it against Aragon's jaws. Fire started to rumble up from his throat, and just when I thought for sure that we were both going to be cooked, I felt a familiar pair of chilled, gloved hands scoop me up and spirit me away. Aragon shot flame at Dark Danny, which sent him blasting down the main corridor of the castle, and Aragon was fast on his heels.

I looked up and saw the real Danny was carrying me. He was beaten up pretty badly, but he was smiling that Danny Phantom smile that meant he had beaten Ember, at least for the time being, and that I was safe. I was dimly aware of us landing by the other dragon in the room, Aragon's sister, before the swelling pain in my gut finally overtook me. I wish I could say I passed out, but my body seemed to be done with that; I stayed wide awake, but my world was reduced to that searing pain.

I couldn't say what happened over the next few hours, but when that impossible fire in my belly finally did recede, I was back in Frostbite's realm. Plasmius was over me, a mixed expression I couldn't decipher on his face, and Danny was by my side. I heard Plasmius murmur something about leaving, which he did. That left me, sitting up in bed for the third time in the past several days, feeling physically whole again, but in every other sense, completely fractured.

Me and Danny.

I looked at him, and my look said everything it needed to; he crawled into the bed with me, put his arm around me, and I curled up, resting my head on his shoulder, and started to cry.

Eventually, we were able to have a conversation. With the aid of the enhanced understanding we had of one another thanks to the emerald and the violet, it was fairly easy for me to get the gist of what he had experienced (although not as easy as it should have been, I noted); Plasmius' explanation of his return from space, Danny's fight with Ember, how he had gotten the venom and fled. Apparently the entire castle was destroyed shortly after we escaped, but Ember and Dark Danny were unaccounted for.

Danny started to learn about my experience, too. About Plasmius' betrayal, and my death. About the imminent danger posed by Dark Danny. Danny was mostly worried about the foremost of these.

"That lying monster," he said through grating teeth. "I can't believe he did that to you. When this is all over, he's going to pay for it."

"He already has," I noted. "Iridian did the same thing to him that he did to me. I watched. It was bad. Ha…I never thought I'd have anything in common with Plasmius, of all people."

"I still want to give him a piece of my mind," Danny said. "It was completely wrong to do that to you. Making the antidote afterwards doesn't even begin to make up for it."

"Ultimately, Iridian is the one who killed me, Danny," I said, very quietly. I was still sitting in bed, though I was sitting upright now, free of pillows. I was feeling better but I was definitely still weak. "Don't forget that he and the other Danny are the real threats here."

Danny sighed, pacing the room. "I know. I'm sorry. It's just…I wanted to protect you. I failed. You've been through so much that I never wanted you to go through and…Sam, this isn't how I want things to be between us! I'm not good at this emotion thing," he said, blushing awkwardly.

I gave a very weak laugh. "Again, Iridian is the one to blame for that. And we'll find a way to work through the emotions when we have time. We have to make time, first."

He looked at me, and the intensity of those glowing green eyes was as fierce as ever, but it didn't sink into me the way it used to. I felt nothing ever would.

"But what's going to be left of you when we get there? Even if Clockwork-"

"Forget about Clockwork," I said, a bit more harshly than I meant to. I didn't want to think about that smug, cryptic bastard. I knew he probably had his impossible rules that prevented him from telling me the obvious truth, but if Iridian was powerful enough to steal something from Clockwork – and not just anything, but _Dark Danny_ – then I felt like those rules could have been bent a little bit more for all our sakes.

Moreover, I knew that Clockwork had almost killed Danny before, simply because he might destroy the people of Earth; but that wasn't even a direct threat to the Ghost Zone, not in the way that the possibility of a planet-wide war was. So why couldn't he freeze time and take out Iridian himself? Or get Dark Danny back in the thermos where he belonged? Either he was playing some incredibly stupid game, or the situation was terrible enough that it merited breaking the rules! I was sick of thinking about him and I didn't care what threats he had made about my own fate. If this was as effective as that ghost could be, then I didn't have much confidence in his ability to take me out, either.

But all of my anger about Clockwork came out all wrong. I saw it on Danny's face: he was hurt. He thought I was angry at him. And when I tried to tell him I wasn't, somehow, I couldn't. I was happy that he was trying to be there for me, but the gravity of the situation was just too much; the thoughts swirling inside me made it clear that there was just no way he could understand, and the fact that he was even trying to just seemed offensive.

I was angry at him. And that scared me.

Now Danny was just confused.

"Sam, what's going on? We have a little while before we're ready to go after them again. We still have to wait for Frostbite's envoy to get back to us about Walker. We should use this time to prepare ourselves, mentally and emotionally. Don't you think we should talk about this?"

"About what?" I snapped, unable to stop myself from shouting. "About me _dying_? About the master of time wanting me dead? Yes, Danny, I would love to talk about those things. I would love to talk about the fact that an actual, living part of my personality was systematically _ripped apart_ by someone wearing a circus grin! I can't even remember what that part of me was…it's completely gone. And you think I want to process that? _Now_, when I still have to fight that monster?"

He was downcast, defeated, but all I could feel was anger. "You aren't going to face him alone," Danny said. "I won't let that happen to you again."

"Really?" I said, crossing my arms. "How do you plan to stop him? Are you going to fight off your older, more powerful self and disrupt Iridian's magic all at the same time?"

"Yes, if I have to!" he said, his own anger starting to rise. "I'll do everything I can! We have to do this, so I don't really have a choice, do I? If I had known that Plasmius had set you up, I never would've let it happen in the first place, which is why I'm so mad at him, and you should be too! Why _aren't_ you mad, anyway?"

"Because he's the only other person I know that knows what it feels like!" I beat my hands on the bedding and fought back tears. "You just don't get it, Danny. But he does. I can't hate him anymore. I got my revenge by watching him, and it was horrible. I don't want that any more. And I don't want you to want it for me."

"I never got my revenge," he said, shaking from the effort to hold back his temper. "Not for this."

We both remained in silence for a while, trying to catch our breaths, collect our thoughts.

"I know how to kill a ghost now," I said, trying to change the subject.

It took him a few breaths to regain his composure, but eventually, he did.

"I figured," he replied, miserably. "And you'll need me to help you do it?"

I nodded. "Someone will have to keep them paralyzed, and weaken them a lot first. I probably can't do it all on my own."

"So we'll do it together," he said, approaching me and staring into my eyes again. "Like we always have."

There was more than just intensity, but love this time, as clear as the shine in the emerald around Danny's neck. I recognized it…but I felt nothing.

Suddenly it clicked. I had made my doppelganger from the focus of Danny's emerald light. Clockwork had said it represented his soul, and my connection to it. So when that form had been killed, the part of me that went with it…

Tears forced themselves out of my eyes, even as I stared back into his.

"What's wrong, Sam?" he asked, trying so hard to be brave.

That was something I could have loved. But it was all gone now. And I didn't know if I could ever get it back.

I shook my head, closed my eyes, wiped them clean.

"Nothing," I lied. "I'm just scared."

The second half, at least, was true enough. But it would hurt too much to admit why.

"Don't be," he said, smiling that cocky smile of his. "My older self isn't _that_ much stronger than me, and that's without the help of this fancy new bling," he said, holding the Emerald, which I honestly doubted even meant anything anymore. "And you're amazing. And that idiot Plasmius is here, and so are all of Frostbite's troops. Plus, we have the Infi-map, so we can out-maneuver Iridian's forces. And Walker might still help us out. It won't be easy, but I know we can do it."

I breathed deeply and nodded, trying to believe him. Deep within, the rumbling power that was slowly awakening thrummed again, as if in agreement. Yes, we could do it…but it was like Danny had tried to say earlier, even if Clockwork let me live, what life was there to be had? The power that would see us through this was cold and deep, almost alien, something I had brought back from the momentary void of death, awakened by seeing itself. It was dark and serene…like the true goth I was, I felt drawn towards it, and the solace from feeling it offered.

Processing the feelings of this ordeal would mean incredible pain, and a slim chance of repairing the fractured parts of my mind and heart; fleeing them, and into the arms of this presence, meant near-certain victory, and cold, dark freedom.

But, another part of me chimed in, Danny's embrace was also cold.

I forced myself to stand, walked towards him, and put my arms around him. He put his arms around me; his touch was chilling, but he glowed so brightly.

I shut my eyes tight. It helped.

A little.

"Sam…I love you," he said, pulling me in closer.

"I love you too," I said.

And I prayed that, in time, that would be true again.

WOWZA, 8 chapters and one of my longest fics yet! Thanks soooo much for sticking with me, guys! Remember, reviews keep me happy, and happy author is an author who updates regularly!

Sincerely,

R


	9. Dark Horizons

Chapter 9

While we waited to hear back from Walker, we tried to find something to do, but options were limited. We checked in with Jaz and Tucker on their progress on Earth; it was slow going, but they seemed to be doing it. The overshadowing ghosts must have been under strict orders not to let the war reach a nuclear level, because so far the warfare had remained "traditional;" whatever Iridian wanted with the world, he didn't want it completely irradiated, it seemed.

We had to trust them and leave them to their work.

We couldn't discuss much in the way of strategy until we knew whether Walker was going to offer help. I couldn't talk about anything with Danny, at least, not yet. But there didn't seem to be anything to do _but_ talk…our wounds were healed and we were all just waiting on the word from Walker and Frostbite. I thought about meditating on my new power, but every time my mind came close to it, I felt this awful falling feeling, like I would never be able to climb out of it. I decided to wait until I needed to use that power before looking any closer.

I was worried about Danny, who seemed so unlike himself with all the talk of anger and revenge; but I couldn't connect with that worry. I found myself wanting to avoid him, to avoid revealing the truth; and not even because I particularly cared if it hurt him. Even caring for his feelings was mostly impossible now; all I cared about was keeping my own fears at bay, at least for the time being.

That left me with only one person to talk to.

I found him in his room, sitting dejectedly on his bed.

"Hi," I said.

"Oh. Sam."

He thought about standing, but didn't. He couldn't meet my eyes.

"Plasmius…I saw what happened." I paused, trying to figure out what to say next. I wasn't even sure what I was doing here, but I had no idea who else to talk to. "Dark Danny opened a portal and made me watch."

"Oh," he said emptily. "I suppose I deserved that, didn't I?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "But I guess I can't exactly stay angry with you anymore."

"Indeed," he answered. Then, a strange light in his eyes, and finally he was able to look at me directly. "Sam…those parts of us he destroyed…do you think they are really gone forever?"

The question took me by surprise. I assumed they would have to be. My confusion must have shown because Plasmius stood and began pacing thoughtfully, the pseudo-mentor energy that defined him now pulsing proudly from his being.

"Consider the theory of the conversion of energy," he said. "Energy cannot be destroyed, it can only change form, into matter, or other kinds of energy. And what is a doppelganger but various kinds of mental and ecto energy? Therefore, even if Iridian managed to dismantle those personalities into their utmost atomic constituents, they must still exist somewhere. It might still be possible to put them back together!"

I wasn't feeling optimistic, and it sounded a little too far-fetched for me. I shook my head. "I don't know. Even if that were true, I'm not thrilled about going on a scavenger hunt for a trillion little bits of what used to be my soul."

"Don't be such a sourpuss, Sam," he said, all the old condescension back in his voice. "I'm just saying that it's a possibility. We don't know the exact mechanism of ghost-killing, and we don't know what Iridian did with the pieces of the doppelgangers. It bears investigation."

"Fine. Investigate it," I said flatly. "I'm not going to hold on to a scrap of hope that thin. Not now."

"You needn't have such an attitude. I know what you went through – I went through the same thing. And if you _hadn't_ gone through it, you wouldn't know how to kill a ghost now, would you?"

I wanted to scream at him for being so self-centered and ignorant, but the idea of getting angry just seemed exhausting. More to the point, it would throw me deeper into process, and further away from the darkness where my power was going to come from. I couldn't afford to get angry now, not for something as trivial as this – maybe not for anything.

"Whatever," I finally said, managing to take a deep, shaky breath. "Look….if you figure anything out, let me know. I'll do the same."

"Excellent," he said, returning to his seat on the bed, a far more thoughtful expression now on his face.

I waited. Maybe I was hoping to hear him apologize for letting me be killed? But it wasn't going to happen. He was lost in thought, and I was in desperate need of distraction; anything to keep me balanced between the volcanic maw of my emotions and the endless abyss of my dark new power.

Fortunately enough, at that precise moment, a voice rang out through the compound, summoning us back to the war room. Frostbite had returned from his envoy to Walker's compound and it was time to discuss strategy.

I sat next to Danny, and to his credit, he showed no signs of his own emotional distress; his mind was on the mission. All of us trained our eyes on Frostbite.

"Everyone, we have managed to secure Walker's assistance."

A sigh of relief echoed throughout the room, and even I felt slightly less tense.

"Great!" Danny said. "What's he offering us?"

"Complete military cooperation," Frostbite said with a grim smile. "His entire compound is prepared to capture and prosecute any ghosts found working with Iridian, and to aid in our assault on his stronghold. Negotiations were quite simple, actually: he had already been planning an all out attack on Iridian, claiming that unilateral attempts at destroying the human world were 'against the rules.' I'm sure we are all in agreement on that sentiment."

"So what's the plan?" I asked.

"We have three main objectives in this action," he said, turning on the digital holographic projector in the table, which displayed an image of a swirling cloud of energy and rock hanging in the Ghost Zone. "This is the gate to Iridian's Stronghold. The first objective is to secure it. After lengthy consultation of the Infi-Map, we have concluded that there is no other point of entry. We must find a way through this gate, most likely by direct assault." The display flickered, and showed a massive, fan-motifed castle, similar to what had once been Aragon's castle but even bigger. "The second objective is to storm the castle and defeat its generals. Based on our intelligence, we do not expect Dark Danny to be present, as he is not officially allied with Iridian, but Ember and several others most likely will be there. They will fight to keep their master safe because they do not have a choice." The screen flickered once again, revealing the interior of castle, with more fan-motifs on the walls, ceiling and carpets. "Our third objective is to get past the castle's defenses, find Iridian, and destroy him."

"So we're just going in with guns blazing?" Danny asked, concerned. "Don't you think he'll be expecting that?"

"Undoubtedly," Frostbite said, cancelling out the display with a dark frown. "But our options are limited. We believe we possess much greater firepower than his army, and we should be able to force our way in, at least until we reach the castle itself. This is where Sam's powers will undoubtedly come into play. We expect that her humanly-intangibility, along with some magical protection, will allow her to pass by any wards that Iridian may have placed. She will take a small team with her, and do her best to undo the wards from within, thereby allowing the rest of us to follow. Then, we will apprehend Iridian and dispose of him."

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sudden humming of my intuition, the warming energy radiating from the violet in my hair. Something was very wrong about this plan, and I thought I knew why.

"What about Dark Danny?" I said.

"As we observed, we do not expect him to risk his safety for-"

"No," I shouted, "I mean, what are we going to _do_ about him? Iridian is the only thing keeping Dark Danny in check. The only reason Dark Danny isn't going on a rampage is because Iridian has his own plans and Dark Danny doesn't want to risk crossing them. Once Iridian is gone, we'll have to deal with Dark Danny. But what if it's too late by then?"

"What do you mean?" Danny asked, looking at me carefully, as if he could almost sense what I meant but had lost some piece of the connection.

"I mean, he's been plotting revenge for a few years now and he probably expects us to go after Iridian. He might even be counting on it. If we don't go after him at the same time as we go after Iridian, he could make his move while we're still busy fighting. Who knows what kind of damage he might cause?"

"Sam raises an excellent point," Frostbite said. "We shall have to send a pursuit team in search of Dark Danny, but I doubt that Walker will be willing to help. Sam – you will have to go after Dark Danny, stop him, and then rendezvous with the rest of us at Iridian's stronghold. You can use the Infi-Map to hasten your progress."

"Great," I said, voice flat. I thought fear was growing somewhere in me, but was already leaning my mind over the lip towards that seed of death, away from troublesome emotions. It was dark and cold and soothing, even against the fearful prospects ahead.

"I'm coming with," Danny said.

"No," Frostbite said, "That will not do. You are one of our most powerful warriors, and have the most experience battling against Iridian's generals. We need you to head the charge against his stronghold."

"I'll accompany Sam," Plasmius said.

"No way, Plasmius!" Danny shouted, jumping out of his seat. "The last time I left her safety in your hands, you let Iridian-"

"I did exactly what was necessary," Plasmius said in his infuriatingly self-assured tone. "And Iridian will be your problem this time, Daniel. Rest assured, I can handle your older self."

"Is that so?" Danny said, crossing his arms. "Because the way I remember it, when an alternate version of you _created_ him, he kicked your butt. And that was before he was fully powered."

"It was also because he took all of my power as well," Plasmius said smugly. "Power which, in this reality, I still have. Put a little faith in me, Daniel – cruel though I must seem, you can't deny that my methods have worked so far. I was able to cure Sam of her poison, wasn't I?"

"But-"

"Enough!" Frostbite shouted, slamming his massive paws on the table. "I apologize, but we do not have any more time for this bickering. Danny, I must agree with Plasmius. Please concede and accept the terms of our plan."

Danny looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he looked at me for some kind of visual cue. All I could fine was darkness. I had nothing left to give him.

He sighed. "Alright. Plasmius, so help me, if you double cross her again…"

"Yes?" Plasmius replied, seeming to be genuinely interested.

Danny just stared, and scoffed, and looked away.

"Then it is decided," Frostbite said. "I will assign you to your specific teams, and we will move out immediately."

I didn't listen to the rest, as I already knew Plasmius and I would be alone. I wasn't thrilled; but I wasn't exactly bothered, either. It was all background noise to the ever-growing darkness in the back of my mind, steadily creeping to the forefront. A seeming tendril drifted out lazily, and I felt it flow through the front of my head, and I shuddered violently. Danny put a hand on my shoulder, but the chill of his touch carried no reassurance now.

I gently removed his hand.

Sorry for the short chapter, everyone, I know it has been a long time since I've updated, but I have just been so swamped with getting a job, finals, moving, getting a new roommate and the whole nine yards! Hopefully I will be able to produce more material soon as we are rapidly approaching the dramatic Jedi Returns-style conclusion of this epic tale. Can't wait to see you there!

-R

PS

Please Review!


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